Govt facing Budget blues

Sarbjit Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 5

With no clear picture on the allocation of funds as part of central assistance for various Plan and non-Plan grants and loans, the Badal government is facing difficulty in preparing its Budget proposals for 2015-2016. The Budget is to be presented in the Assembly on March 20.

Official sources said they were in touch with Union Finance Ministry officials ascertain the actual allocation of funds to the state. But sources in the ministry said they had yet to finalise the allocation.

“We are finding it hard to give shape to the Budget proposals. We are preparing proposals on tentative figures. We will include the actual figures once the picture is made clear by the Union Government,” said Parminder Singh Dhindsa, state Finance Minister.

“By our own estimates, the state’s over-all allocation for the next fiscal will be slightly higher than that for the current fiscal,” the minister said. 

As per the Union Budget, allocation to the states from taxes and duties will be Rs 5,23,958 crore and for non-Plan grants and loans Rs 1,08,630 crore. 

The net transfer of resources from the Centre to all states and  UTs would be Rs 8,42,963 crore as against last year’s figure of Rs 6,83,966 crore.

There are 34 Plan schemes which are to be fully funded by the Union Government. These include MGNREGA, Border Area Development Programme, Pradhan Manti Gram Sadak Yojana, MPLAD Scheme and various schemes for SC/ST and OBC students. A sum of Rs 1,18,512 crore has been allocated  for these schemes. It is unclear as to what would be Punjab’s share.

Also, there are 20 Plan schemes which would be partly funded by the Centre. It is clear that the states would have to contribute more for these schemes.  For 2015-2016, the allocation for these schemes is Rs 78,229.80 crore whereas it was Rs 1,03021.65 crore for this fiscal. 

There are eight schemes, including those for modernising the police, for opening model schools and for developing export infrastructure, for which there will be no central grant. Punjab was getting about Rs 700 crore under these schemes. 

The total allocation for these schemes for the current fiscal is Rs 4,585.64 crore. Also, there are 31 other schemes for which no allocation has been made for the next fiscal whereas the allocation for these schemes  for 2014-2015 was Rs 58,355 crore. Obviously, these schemes would have to be funded by the states from their own resources.