Allotment under Vote on Account to be completed by Mar 31

The state finance department has urged all administrative departments to complete the whole process of disbursement of allotments under Vote-on-Account for 2014-15 by the end of this month.

“The entire process of distribution of allotment under Vote-on-Account should be completed on or before March 31, 2014 in order to enable the treasuries/sub-treasuries to process the claims pertaining to the next financial year. However, sanction and release of funds from the Vote on Account would be regulated by specific instructions of  the finance department to be issued in this regard”, U N Behera,additional chief secretary (finance) wrote to all departments.

The state legislative assembly has passed the Vote on Account and the related Appropriation Bill has been enacted, authorizing the government departments to incur expenditure from April 1, 2014.

While the overall Budget size for FY 15 has been pegged at Rs 76006.87crore, the government had sought approval from the assembly for spending Rs 34,829.36 crore in the April-July period.

The provision made in the Vote on Account will be made available in the Budget interface and work expenditure module of Odisha treasury portal, enabling administrative departments to distribute the allotments to their controlling officers from March 24.

In turn, the controlling officers would be able to distribute the provisions allotted to them by the administrative departments to their drawing and disbursing officers (DDOs) from March 29.

Necessary training will be provided to the officials in e-distribution of budgetary allocation in the nerve centre of the directorate of treasuries.

The onus is on the administrative departments and controlling officers to ensure distribution of budgetary allocation within March 31.

Bereft of any new scheme, the Vote on Account has reaffirmed focus on existing schemes on areas like agriculture, irrigation, infrastructure development, poverty eradication, health, education, rural development, social security and social welfare.

The government has anticipated a revenue surplus of Rs  1120.13 crore by the close of 2014-15 projecting revenue receipt and revenue expenditure of Rs 62916.76 crore and Rs 61796.44 crore respectively. Fiscal deficit is estimated at Rs  9856.03 crore by the end of next fiscal, 2.98 per cent of the gross state domestic product (GSDP) estimated at Rs 3,30,390 crore.

The State Plan size has been tentatively pegged at Rs 35,000 crore for2014-15 which includes Rs 2000 crore for public sector undertakings(PSUs). The net Non-Plan expenditure is projected at Rs  42,422 crore.