)
The state government today unveiled the Supplementary Budget for this fiscal with the size pegged at Rs 4,502.34 crore and containing a special provision of Rs 300 crore towards contribution to the corpus fund announced previously to compensate depositors duped by unscrupulous chit fund players.
Though the state government had announced the creation of the corpus fund in July, 2013, no budgetary provision was made since. This had attracted a barrage of criticism from various quarters regarding sincerity of the government to refund money to the cheated depositors.
“The Budgetary provision would ensure that money goes back to the depositors who actually lost their deposits. We are in the process of collecting data of such depositors. The government will be guided by the Justice R K Patra commission that has received complaints from depositors on chit fund scam,” said U N Behera, additional chief secretary (finance).
Also Read
The Supplementary Budget has net provision of Rs 4,502.34 crore and gross provision of Rs 5,253.87 crore. The state's full Budget for the fiscal had gross provision of Rs 81,720.95 crore and net provision of Rs 80,139.58 crore.
The Supplementary provision of Rs 4,502.34 crore is to be financed by tied up resources to the extent of Rs 2,662.57 crore, surrender of provision in grants and appropriations to the extent of Rs 1,265.47 crore and Rs 574.30 crore through savings and surrenders towards the end of the financial year.
The outlay for the Non-Plan sector has been pegged at Rs 2,536.87 crore, out of which an amount of Rs 300 crore will go towards contribution to the corpus fund for protection of interest of depositors. The Non-Plan component also includes Rs 250 crore provided for special calamity assistance to farmers for procurement of paddy, Rs 54.59 crore towards relief expenditure, Rs 1,475.16 crore towards repayment liability and balance Rs 457.12 crore towards salary and other expenditure.
Under the State Plan, the additional budget allocation has been pegged at Rs 1,960.30 crore. This includes Rs 679.76 crore for ‘Nirmal Bharat Yojana’, Rs 225.77 crore for ‘Integrated Watershed Management Programme’, Rs 137.34 crore for other schemes in agriculture sector, Rs 116 crore towards infrastructure development in technical education, Rs 39.74 crore towards Madhubabu Pension Yojana, Rs 92 crore for road sector development, Rs 20 crore for Western Odisha Development Council (WODC) and Rs 50 crore for development of Jharsuguda airport to name a few.
“With this Supplementary Budget, we hope to maintain revenue surplus, contain fiscal deficit within three per cent of GSDP (Gross State Domestic Product) and keep the debt GSDP ratio at the year-end within the level mandated by the 13th Finance Commission. We also expect that we will increase the capital spending to more than four per cent of GSDP,” said finance minister Pradeep Amat.
The minister said, the government is reviewing its Plan expenditure every month and taking necessary steps for full utilisation of Budgetary provision including Supplementary provision. “Despite down turn in flow of our own revenues, we are reviewing the collection of revenue closely and are taking necessary steps to collect the estimated revenue,” he added. State Plan expenditure up to September 2014 has registered a growth of 89.75 per cent over the corresponding period of previous year and is 31.34 per cent of the Budget estimate.
