Bhubaneswar: As revenue collection in the state remained unsatisfactory, the state government has asked its departments to focus on alternative resources to meet expenditure for the remaining period of 2016-17 fiscal and instructed concerned officials to come up with a revised budget estimate for the period and a budget estimate for 2017-18 on similar lines.
Finance secretary TK Pandey in a letter to all additional chief secretaries, secretaries and heads of departments has said the sharing pattern of core schemes between Centre and state has been revised to 60:40 ratio and optional schemes to 50:50 ratio.
Pandey who referred to curtailment of funds by Centre under various heads said the state government has implemented many schemes starting from Biju KBK Yojana to Gopabandhu Grameen Yojana on its own.
“A number of new and innovative schemes have been introduced during the current fiscal,” he said, adding, “All these schemes need large commitment for financial resources.”
“Special emphasis will be given to collection of arrears and disposal of cases pending in courts,” the finance secretary stressed.
According to a senior official, the state government’s concern is evident as there is a mismatch between revenue expenditure and collection.
For 2016-17 fiscal the budget size of the state government is over `1 lakh crore (main and supplementary budgets together) with an estimated borrowing of `15,014.1crore to finance the plan outlay of `50,000 crore. The fiscal deficit for the current fiscal has been projected at `14,532crore.
However, government statistics says till November (first month of third quarter) while the expenditure went up by around 21 per cent compared to the corresponding period of previous fiscal, the total revenue collection (from tax and non-tax and other sources) however remained only 48 per cent of the total revenue collection target set for the current fiscal.
The total collection from both the tax and non-tax sources has been around `17,896 up to November in 2016-17 fiscal against the total collection of `17,967cr during the same period of 2015-16.
Government sources said while revenue collection from mining sector, a major contributor to state’s exchequer has also remained “far from satisfactory”, the cash crunch post demonetization has added to the woes in terms of collection of revenue in various sectors including transport.
To meet budget expenditure the government has already gone for market borrowing of `3,700 crore so far.
Meanwhile, Pandey, in his letter said, “In order to achieve revenue balance during 2017-18, unproductive revenue expenditure is to be curtailed and utmost care is to be taken while preparing the revised estimates.
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