A day after increasing the borrowing target for this year, the finance ministry today asked all government departments to limit their supplementary demands for grants to a few specified areas in the upcoming Winter Session of Parliament.
The ministry said it would not entertain any proposal for cash supplementary during the current financial year, except in absolutely unavoidable cases or those related to the Budget announcements. Even in such cases, it asked them to identify matching savings with their departments.
On Thursday, the government had increased its borrowing target for this year by Rs 52,800 crore to Rs 4,17,000 crore because of a lower cash balance and dip in collections from small savings schemes. It has, however, maintained additional borrowing would not affect its fiscal deficit target of 4.6 per cent of GDP for this fiscal.
In a note to financial advisors of ministries, Economic Affairs Additional Secretary Shaktikanta Das listed four groups of supplementary demands that could be considered for inclusion in the second batch.
The first is where advances from the Contingency Fund of India have been granted, which are required to be recouped to the fund. The second category includes payments against court decree which cannot be postponed. Demands can also be considered in cases where the finance ministry has specifically decided to move the supplementary demand.
Additional funds which are immediately required and can be met by re-appropriation of savings in the grant, but require prior approval of Parliament, would be classified under the supplementary demand for grants in the Winter Session.
“In all cases where the savings are available within the same section (Revenue/Capital and Charged/Voted] of the grant, only token supplementary should be proposed. In cases where the savings are available in the Revenue/Capital section or charged/voted section and the expenditure is to be incurred in another section, full requirement may be proposed as a technical supplementary,” it said.
Savings against which the full amount is proposed in a different section, will be committed for surrender and will not be available for re-appropriation. All other cases will be held over to the third and final batch of supplementary demands for the current year.
The finance ministry has also asked the government departments to ensure that the proposals are made on the basis of thorough objective and realistic assessment of additional requirement of funds.
The instructions came in the backdrop of the Public Accounts Committee commenting adversely on cases where ministries obtained supplementary grants in earlier years, but the final expenditure was less than or in excess of the approved grant.
In the first supplementary in August, Parliament had cleared gross Rs 34,724 crore extra expenditure. The government, however, had said the net outgo would be only Rs 9,016 crore and Rs 25,000 crore would be met through savings in other heads.
