NITI Aayog advocates big expenditure hike

Suggests delinking of Drug Price Control Order from National List of Essential Medicines

A big portion of Centre's total expenditure in the next three years should be on roads and railways where the total spending should rise from Rs 40,000 crore in 2015-16 to over Rs 1.18 lakh crore in 2019-20, the NITI Aayog's three-year action agenda has envisaged.

The agenda's draft, which was shared with chief minister's in a recent meeting on Sunday, also said the expenditure on health sector should increase from Rs 30,000 crore to atleast Rs 100,000 crore to attain the health goals set by the government.

The agenda replaced the five-year plan process, a legacy of the Planning Commisison.

On health, the document also advocated delinking the Drug Price Control Order from the National List of Essential Medicines to enable the Centre powers to impose price control on more drugs and make drugs affordable for people.

At present, only drugs that are part of the National List of Essential Medicines are brought under the Schedule 1 of the Drug Price Control Order(DPCO) 2013, subsequently brought under price control by the NPPA.

In the past, the NPPA has brought down of essential drugs by 85 per cent like in the case of cancer drugs.

The government has already started meeting industry officials to bring about amendments in the DPCO, hence make medicines affordable to all.

The Aayog meanwhile in its agenda also favoured creation of separate cell or department in the health ministry to deal with issues related to public health.

On expenditure in other sectors, officials said the document, which hasn't been made public yet also advises raising the capital expenditure on agriculture and rural development from Rs 1.03 lakh crore in 2015-16 to over Rs 216,000 crore in 2019-20. This would mean an increase of 1.8 per centage points as share of total government expenditure.

From 2015-16, the agenda envisaged a scenario where defence capital expenditure would rise from Rs 95,000 crore, or 5.3 per cent of total spending, to Rs 1.72 lakh crore, or 6.2 per cent.

Allocation for education is expected to rise from Rs 66,000 crore in 2015-16 to Rs 1.12 lakh crore in 2019-20, or from 3.7 per cent of total budgeted expenditure to Rs 4 per cent.

The agenda also lays emphasis on bringing down land prices in urban areas to make housing affordable and suggests a series of measures that include releasing of surplus land held by PSUs, and creation of dormitory systems for migrant labourers.

It also talked about reforming the Rent Control Act along the lines of Model Tenancy Act in cities in conjunction with states.

GST compensation payout to exceed Rs 1.2 lakh cr

The Niti Aayog projects central government to pay nearly Rs 1.23 lakh crore as compensation to states for loss of the nationwide goods and service tax over a three-year period from 2017-18 to 2019-20, higher than the Rs 90,000 crore that has been demanded by the states.

The Aayog's draft three-year action agenda for India projects a payout to compensate states of Rs 37,500 crore for 2017-18, Rs 45,000 for 2018-19 and Rs 40,000 crore in 2019-20 from the centre. The compensation for states from the projected losses arising from the implementation of the nationwide GST regime was originally projected at Rs 55,000 crore.