Finance Ministry likely to issue advisory halting excess expenditure

One of the key components of the relook at expenditure is cutting down on reborn centrally-sponsored schemes

To stick to the fiscal deficit numbers for financial year 2018-19, the government plans to tighten its belt again. The finance ministry is expected to soon issue an expenditure advisory that would crimp all spending by ministries in the last few months of this year.

The announcement had got delayed as Finance Minister Arun Jaitley underwent a kidney transplant and was out of action for a long time. Given the sensitivity of the subject, the expenditure department wanted the advisory to be sent out once he was back in the saddle.

Since 2015, these instructions have not gone out from the North