Bhubaneswar: For the first time in his political career, Finance Minister Niranjan Pujari will present the state’s annual budget for 2019-20 in Assembly Friday.
“The preparation for the presentation of the annual budget is on its last leg. After presenting the budget, I will brief the details,” said Pujari.
As per tradition, the Finance Minister presents the Agriculture Budget for 2019-20 and then the full Budget. The state government has been presenting a separate Agriculture Budget since 2013-14. The outlay of first agriculture budget was Rs 7162 crore, which is likely to go up to Rs 20,000 crore in this year.
According to sources, the annual budget for the current fiscal is likely to exceed Rs 1,39,000 crore to ensure sufficient funds for schemes like Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (KALIA) and post-Fani restoration work. The size of 2018-19 annual budget was Rs 1,20,028 crore.
The Council of Ministers headed by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had endorsed the annual Budget June 20.
The government is likely to make a provision of Rs 57,300 crore under administrative expenditure, Rs 70,000 crore for programme expenditure, Rs 4,600 crore for disaster response fund and Rs 6,500 crore for transfers from the state.
The sources said the government may allocation funds for additional borrowing to meet expenditure required to carry out restoration work in the aftermath of Fani and to execute BJD government’s popular schemes like KALIA, State Food Security Scheme, universal health scheme Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana (BSKY), women-related
initiatives like Mamata and Mission Shakti.
The debt burden which stood at Rs 87,000 crore by the end of 2018-19 fiscal, is estimated to go up to over Rs 1 lakh crore by March 2020. It is unlikely that the government will announce any major scheme in this Budget, the sources said.
Ahead of general elections in February, 2019, the state government had presented a vote-on-account of Rs 1, 32, 660 crore for 2019-20 in the Assembly, projecting an economic growth in the range of 8 per cent to 8.5 per cent.
