RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, Feb.3: Chief Minister Hemant Soren participating in a pre-budget consultative exercise today talked about midterm review of the fund allocation to get a better outcome of the budget.
Chief Minister Soren said the midterm review will help proper fund management and the government can use the optimum utilisation of funds.
His words came after Chief Secretary Sukhdev Singh during the consultation talked about the same, explaining the exercise helps cut the fund of the poor performing sector and divert it towards the good performing sector for better outcome of the budget.
Singh said the central government did this exercise and when he was finance secretary in 2012 the then finance minister P.Chidambaram had laughed observing that the budget estimate (BE) and revised estimate (RE) of Jharkhand were the same for Jharkhand.
Soren, on the occasion, counted priorities of the state and talked about the self employment generation programme and ensuring the role of banks in development.
Before Soren counted priorities of the state, experts of different sectors, responsible industrialists, businessmen and youths gave their suggestions for providing funds for development in different sectors. Soren noted those points and said he will take care that the suggestions given during the consultation be accommodated in the budget.
Soren while promising this mentioned hostels in districts, hostels for working women, appointment of teachers in colleges, opening of colleges, development of cities on PPP mode, skill mapping, nursing training for male, infrastructure for mental care of people, converting rural economy into start ups, further promotion of sports, development of tourism sector, zero power cut, besides others.
The CM, on the occasion, said in Jharkhand, where common people do not have interest in the government’s budget, preparing a budget with due attention on social security and infrastructural development is a challenge and in order to complete the challenging exercise help the government is intentional to take suggestions from everyone.
The Chief Secretary, on the occasion, shared the challenges before the state saying that Jharkhand people are equally vocal on infrastructure development and social security and it has always been a challenging task for a government in the state to strike and balance. He said fiscal space is limited in the state where Rs 13000 crore goes to salary, Rs 10000 for loan and interest repayment and Rs 10,000 crore goes for giving matching funds for centre sponsored schemes. He said that GST has limited the state taxation.
The Chief Secretary said it sounds good saying that the state has natural resources like forest and minerals but practically the cost of harbouring the same is much more than income as several projects got stuck up due to forest clearance and pollution as the mining causes pollution and creates many problems.
Chief Secretary Singh, on the occasion, asked different departments to not work in isolation and suggested that while working in a particular sector ensure that there should not be duplicacy in the work. He also suggested proper management of public ledger accounts and not to spend the state budget for the work for which funds come from the union government. He asked the department to prepare a three-year plan in advance to ensure that projects do not remain pending due to delay in site selection, preparation of DPR, land availability and finalisation of tender.
