Hyderabad: The TS government’s Budget preparatory exercise for the financial year (2017-18) has hit a roadblock in the form of shifting of Secretariat.
All departments are busy in making preparations to shift from the Secretariat to other locations after the government set them a deadline of 10 days to do so.
The Finance department usually starts its Budget exercise from the first week of November, but this year, officials are doubtful whether it could be taken up even by the first week of December.
Officials say it would take at least a month for all departments to settle after shifting. This year, the Centre has decided to advance General Budget by a month and the TS government wants to follow suit.
The Prime Minister recently said that the Union Budget will be presented on February 1, 2017 instead of in the last week of the month. He advised state governments to advance their Budget schedule, too, so that they are aligned with the Union Budget.
The Centre hopes advancing the date will help initiate revenue mobilisation and capital expenditure measures right from the beginning of the fiscal year (April 1).
The state Budget is normally presented mid-March and for that, the finance department starts the exercise from November. If the government wants to align with Centre's new Budget deadline of February 1, it has to complete the exercise by mid-January.
“We have to cut short our Budget preparatory exercise by 1.5 months over the previous years to meet the February 1 deadline. To meet the new deadline, the exercise should have started in October. But we are not in a position to start the exercise even in November as all departments are busy shifting offices from the Secretariat. The entire exercise was made online and the online system has to be restored first. With reports of offices to be set up in multiple locations, the online connectivity would be a major issue,” said a senior official.
The department has already taken up the issue with Chief Secretary Rajiv Sharma with a request that unless the shifting process and online connectivity issues are resolved on a war-footing, it would be difficult to meet February deadline.
