The State Budget for 2013-14 may cross Rs 60,000 crore, about Rs 8,000 crore more than Rs 52,030.70 crore outlay proposed for 2012-13.
Odisha’s Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) for the next fiscal has been pegged at Rs 2.9 lakh crore, which is 11.53 per cent higher than the current year’s figure of Rs 2.6 lakh crore.
“The Budgetary allocation for 2013-14 will be 10-15 per cent higher compared to 2012-13. The focus of the Budget will be on agriculture, education, health and infrastructure creation. The Budget to be presented in the third week of next month will have no new taxes. It will contain some new people centric schemes, especially in agriculture and health sectors,” an official source in the know of the development told Business Standard.
The finance department had recently held a two-day pre-Budget consultative process with representatives of different socio-economic groups, industrial bodies, opinion makers, academicians, bureaucrats in the run up to the Budget.
The objective of the pre-Budget consultation was to assimilate the views of different sections of the society which would help the planners to make the budget more broad-based, people oriented and transparent.
Ahead of the Budget presentation, Centre for Science and Youth Development (CYSD), a city-based non-governmental organization (NGO) has urged the state government to make efforts to increase share of plan expenditure in total expenditure
The NGO (non-governmental organization) has pointed out that non plan expenditure of the state occupies two-third of resources available while the share of plan expenditure has stagnated in last five years.
The percentage of plan expenditure has increased marginally to 33.98 per cent in 2012-13 from 33.18 per cent in 2008-09.
For 2012-13, the state had allocated Rs 17,680.20 crore and Rs 34,350.40 crore towards Plan and Non-Plan expenditure respectively.
In comparison to two other non-special category states like Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, Plan expenditure in Odisha is less both in absolute and relative terms. While Gujarat has allocated 50.39 per cent of its total expenditure towards plan spending, neighbouring Andhra Pradesh has set aside 37.39 per cent of its total outlay for the same.
CYSD has also urged the state government to increase the share of capital expenditure as a proportion of total expenditure.
Capital expenditure in Odisha as proportion of total expenditure declined from 14 per cent (Rs 2,843 crore) in 2007-08 to 11 per cent (Rs 4,496 crore) in 2011-12, says a latest report of the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) on state finances.
This was below the level of capital expenditure incurred by other general category states at 13 per cent in 2011-12.
