 "Jayant Sinha")
The government on Monday said it has the "space" to absorb the burden of Rs 8,000-10,000 crore on account of OROP and that it would not hurt its fiscal consolidation programme.
"We have the fiscal space to be able to absorb this without having any impact of the fiscal deficit target, which is 3.9 per cent. So, we have taken that into account as we have prepared the one rank-one pension (OROP) scheme," Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha told PTI in an interview.
The government had last week announced that it will implement OROP under which a uniform pension would be given to armed forces personnel retiring at the same rank with the same length of service. The scheme would be implemented from July 1, 2014. Funding the OROP, the minister said, was never a consideration, but the government took time in finalising the scheme as it wanted it to be "equitable and not half-baked".
Sinha said the actual payout in arrears for implementation of the scheme from July 1, 2014 as well as the recurring burden is being worked out. For the current year, the outgo is estimated at Rs 8,000-10,000 crore, he said.
