Comfort for FM in tardy spending pace

Half of government departments won't spend allocated plan funds; many will fall well short

After facing a substantial expenditure cut last year, almost half of all government departments will fail to fully utilise their allocated Plan Budget this year, a relief for Finance Minister P Chidambaram, trying hard to keep the Centre’s fiscal deficit from crossing 4.8 per cent of gross domestic product. The deficit has already crossed 95 per cent of the Budget Estimates (BE).

The rules says ministries cannot spend more than 33 per cent of the allocated plan expenditure in the last quarter of a year.

However, departments such as petroleum, fertilisers, planning, steel, home affairs, pharmaceuticals, water resources, nuclear power and posts have not even spent a third of the amount in the first nine months of the financial year (April-December 2013-14).

According to a finance ministry official, while the expenditure of many departments has already been lowered in the Revised Estimates (RE), to be presented in Parliament as part of the Vote-on-Account on February 17, “the actual expenditure of some ministries at the end of March 2014 is expected to be lower than their RE and in a few cases, even lower than their last year’s actual expenditure”.  

Despite the Planning Commission trying to ensure the entire amount allocated for expenditure for 2013-14 is not bunched in the last few months, the government will have a cash balance at the end of the year.

The norms also say a department cannot spend more than 15 per cent of its BE in the last month.

Of 106 departments, as many as 51 had unspent funds of more than 33 per cent at December 31, 2013. In fact, 28 had spent less than half their budget allocation. These include land resources, telecommunications, public enterprises, panchayati raj, power, public works, corporate affairs, shipping and consumer affairs.

Some such as rural development, environment & forests, information & broadcasting, earth sciences and food & public distribution got wiser after the finance ministry substantially slashed their expenditure in 2012-13 but still were short of meeting the expenditure estimate.

However, many such as urban development, food processing, land resources, planning and home affairs did not seem to have taken any lesson from last year’s experience; they spent even less.

Plan expenditure till December 31 was 63.3 per cent of the BE, (Rs 555,322 crore). The figure in the corresponding period of 2012-13 was 57 per cent and the government had saved Rs 92,000 crore.

Expenditure of high-spending ministries such as rural development, health & family welfare and human resource development was slashed in the RE.