FM for outcome budget in states

Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said the Outcome Budget would, in future, include non-plan expenditure. He admitted that the country's first Outcome Budget was not a perfect document, and hoped that states, too, would adopt the exercise.

Chidambaram said the Outcome Budget consisted of 723 and 751 pages in English and Hindi version, respectively. It covered 44 ministries consisting of around 61 departments.

Nine ministries and departments, including the defence ministry, the department of atomic energy, external affairs and parliamentary affairs, had not been covered. This was because it was difficult in these ministries to have monitorable and measurable outcomes.

"We are willing to put on our thinking caps to see how even these departments can be included," he said.

Chidambaram hoped that the Outcome Budget would become a "pre-expenditure instrument", and help ministries and department to begin looking at expenditure through the "prism of outcome".

He said the Budget from the next year would be tabled towards the end of the Budget Session in May. It will provide outcomes for the expenditure provided for in the Budget for a fiscal. Each department and ministry will continue with the present practice of tabling a Performance Budget giving the details of the performance in the year gone by.

"The three documents - the Union Budget, the Outcome Budget and the Performance Budget will present a better picture of what has been done by the government," he said, adding that time lines for half a year, three quarters or for a quarter would be indicated where ever it was possible to do so.

The minister said the finance ministry and the Planning Commission would put in place a monitoring system using resources within and outside the government to report delivery within the government's six flagship programmes - the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, Integrated Child Development Programme, Road Project and the Bharat Nirman Scheme.

Chidambaram said the Outcome Budget would improve in the coming years. He pointed out that the exercise of preparing the document was complex, as the outcome had to be measured in relation to some benchmarks such as past performance, international standards, quality and per unit cost of delivery.