BHUBANESWAR, 07 Jan. 2019:Today, Finance Minister Shashi Bhusan Behera presented a welfare, growth, development and investment-oriented Budget (Vote-on-Account) for 2019-20 in the Odisha Legislative Assembly with an outlay of Rs 1,32,660 crore which is about 10.4% more than the Annual Budget 2018-19.
The term of the 15th Assembly will expire within a few months and general elections will be held. The Model Code of Conduct for General Elections will come into force after the announcement by the Election Commission of India. Customarily, the new Government has the prerogative to formulate new programmes and schemes. Accordingly, instead of presenting a full-fledged budget we proposed to seek a Vote-on-Account to enable the Government to incur expenditure for the first four months of the financial year 2019-20 on the existing establishment and ongoing schemes and projects.
The comparative position of the outlays for 2018.19 (BE) and 2019.20 (BE) (VoA) are as follows:
To defray the expenditure on existing establishments and continuing schemes and projects from April to July, 2019, 100% of BE for calamity and election-related expenses and 40% of BE for all other schemes may be taken in the Vote on Account (VoA) which is estimated at Rs 56.921 crone.
- Qualitative Aspects of the Budget
- The outlay of Rs 66,000 crore for programme expenditure.
- The allocation for Agriculture and Allied sectors in this Budget has been substantially enhanced to Rs 19,557 crore in 2019-20.
- Allocation of Rs 19,911 crore for Education and Skills sector
- Allocation of Rs 6708 crore for the Health sector.
- Investment of about Rs 2,935 crore for Piped Water Supply Projects
- Allocation of Rs 22,044 crore for development of SCs and STs for identified Schemes in the Programme budget.
- Outlay for development expenditure is more than 75% of total budget
- Tax GSDP Ratio for 2019-20 (BE) would be 6.1%
- Revenue surplus projected at 1.6% GSDP
- Fiscal deficit kept within the prescribed limit of 3% of GSDP.
Department-wise allocations
Prasanta Patnaik