No supplementary provisions for under performing departments

With the supplementary statement of expenditure of the state government for 2011-12 likely to be placed in the assembly in November, the finance department has sought proposals from all departments for inclusion in the statement.

The finance department has come out with guidelines according to which proposal for substantive supplementary provision shall not be provided to any department whose actual expenditure by the end of September is less than 30 per cent of the Budget provision.

As per the Cash Management System, the administrative departments covered under the scheme are required to spend at least 60 per cent of the Budget provision by the end of December. During the previous years, it has been observed that in many cases the full supplementary provision has been surrendered which has attracted adverse audit comments.

As envisaged under the Orissa Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2005 no additional expenditure should be incurred without corresponding resources being firmed up or without reducing equivalent amount of expenditure somewhere else.

The finance department has observed that there is little scope for substantive provision at the supplementary stage unless the proposed expenditure is backed by equal amount of additional firm resources.

The department has emphasized that supplementary provision should not be prepared in a routine manner but should receive personal attention of the concerned estimating and controlling officer so that the proposals are based on actual need and should commensurate with their actual spending capacity.

The finance department would consider additional requirement towards state share for Centrally sponsored plan schemes subject to firm commitment received for the corresponding Central share.

Furthermore, additional provisions under these heads would be provided only if the rate of utilization of the existing provision is satisfactory. In case actual expenditure under these heads is less than 30 per cent of the Budget provision by the end of September, additional provision, if required will have to be matched by equivalent savings in the State Plan ceiling within the respective demand.

The stringent guidelines proposed by the finance department for supplementary provision comes at a time when spending by most of the government departments has been below par in the April-June quarter.

Two departments of the state government- general administration and public enterprises have failed to spend even a single rupee in the April-June quarter of this fiscal under the State Plan.

While a budgetary allocation of Rs 49.68 crore was made for the general administration department, Rs 6 crore was set aside for public enterprises in the State budget for 2011-12.

Besides, the expenditure levels of ten other departments has been woefully inadequate under the State Plan in the said period with the percentage of expenditure of these departments being less than five per cent.

These departments and the expenditure levels clocked by them include excise (2.70 per cent), home (4.03 per cent), information technology (4.03 per cent), labour & employment (1.67 per cent), revenue & disaster management (1.05 per cent), school & mass education (4.12 per cent), science & technology (2.31 per cent), sports & youth affairs (2.10 per cent), steel & mines (1.67 per cent) and tourism (1.95 per cent).