Only 13 out of the 38 departments have shown improvement over last fiscal
Picture used for representational purpose. (Photo: DC/File)
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Planning Board’s strategy to improve plan fund utilisation by dividing a fiscal into four quarters and setting utilisation targets for each quarter seems to have fallen flat.
The target set for the first quarter (April-June) was 10 percent but the first quarter spending during the 2014-15 fiscal is a mere 2.73 percent, a sign of development freeze.
The Q1 spending of last fiscal, which was considered to be one of the worst, looks better at 4.71 percent. Intriguingly, this fiscal’s virtual non-spending has happened at a time when the state has already exhausted Rs 4,400 crore of the Rs 12,000 crore it can borrow from the open market for development purposes.
Only 13 out of the 38 departments have shown improvement over last fiscal. Here are some of the major departments that have become dysfunctional or recorded below one percent utilisation: environment, higher education, housing, scheduled tribes, social justice and transport. As for local bodies, a utilisation of 0.1 percent demonstrates nothing but a breakdown of decentralised planning.
Only public works and tourism have crossed the target of 10 percent utilisation and both are departments where the spending has consistently been on the higher side.
But even in these two, spending has fallen considerably. For instance, during the last fiscal, the public works department had spent 45 percent of its allocated funds within the first quarter itself. This fiscal, it has come down to 17 percent. Similar is the case with tourism where utilisation has come down to 10.54 percent from 12.6 percent last fiscal first quarter.
A substantial portion of the Rs 4,400 crore borrowed exclusively for development purposes has gone into non-plan expenditure like salaries, pensions and interest. “Till August, the state has spent only Rs 749 crore on plan implementation while it has already borrowed '4,400 crore,” former finance minister Dr T. M. Thomas Isaac said.
“Now they will borrow another Rs 1,000 crore to meet the Onam expenses. All this is leading to complete financial anarchy,” he added.
( Source : dc )
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