Financial year about to end, budget spending a poor 66 pc

Neena Sharma 

Tribune News Service 

Dehradun, March 8 

While in the Opposition, the BJP had trained guns on the Congress for its poor budget spending, but now in power in the state, the track record of the BJP government is no different. 

Instead of spending 100 per cent, the government has only spent about 66 per cent of the budget (2017-2018) and the financial year is about to end.

Soon after taking up the reins of the state last year, the BJP government had made a provision of Rs 40,080.94 crore in its first budget with a promise that the entire budget would be spent by departments.

However, the BJP government too has managed to spend only Rs 26,306.79 crore by end of January this year. 

There has been a tendency among various government departments to wait for the yearend for increasing the pace of spending, which was even criticised by the   Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) in its reports. 

In it’s reports, the CAG had cautioned governments against this habit as it gave a rise to unjustified spending.   

Though Finance Minister Prakash Pant claimed that he had been taking quarterly meetings of the departments to ensure that there was no slackening in the budget, the departments have been slow to grasp the reality of timely spending, he said.

He added that there had been a considerable focus on proper financial management and the results would be evident in the new financial year.

“If you look at the overall spending by our government, it is 10 per cent more than the last financial year, when the Congress government was in power,” Pant said.

However, former Finance Minister Indira Hridayesh rejected these claims and said, “Despite political uncertainty and election year, the financial management of the Congress was much better than the BJP government, we were able to give the salaries and pension of all government employees,” said Hridayesh.        

Slack spending

• As far as budget spending is concerned, the track record of the BJP government is no different from Cong
• Soon after taking up the reins of the state last year, the BJP government had made a provision of Rs 40,080.94 crore in its first budget with a promise that the entire budget would be spent by departments
• But the government has managed to spend only Rs 26,306.79 crore by end of January this year
• There has been a tendency among various government departments to wait for the yearend for increasing the pace of spending. This has been criticised by CAG