Odisha Council of Ministers approves 2016-17 Budget

The State Budget is scheduled to be presented on March 18 during the assembly session commencing on March 15

The Odisha Council of Ministers today approved the Budget for 2016-17, listing agriculture, health and education as the priority areas.

Though officials were tight-lipped on the Budget size, the outgo may be around Rs 94,000 crore. This includes Rs 45,000 crore of Plan expenditure and the rest Non-Plan spending.

The state government is under pressure to finance eight schemes where the Centre has frozen financial support and chip in with higher outlay for 33 schemes restructured by the Union government. The strain on finances is likely to goad the state government to peg higher borrowing targets for 2016-17, especially from the open market. In FY 16, the state government set borrowing target of Rs 12,000 crore and has already borrowed over Rs 6000 crore from the open market through sale of government securities.

The State Budget is scheduled to be presented on March 18 during the assembly session that commences on March 15.

This is also for the fourth consecutive year when the state is going to present an exclusive budget for the farm sector, an initiative that kicked off in 2013-14.

In 2015-16, the agri budget size was pegged at Rs 10903.61 crore, a rise of 14.27 per cent over the previous budget.