Odisha: Unspent funds cross supplementary budget outlay

BHUBANESWAR: More funds remain unutilised by different departments compared to the provisions made under the State plan in the supplementary budget raising questions over such an exercise. Supplementary budgets are placed by the State Government in the Assembly every year to make provisions for acceleration of development projects.The trend of surrendered funds by different departments surpassing the quantum of supplementary provisions has become more visible from 2009-10. During 2009-10, supplementary provision for different departments under the State plan was `1,321 crore, where as `1,391 crore remained unutilised during the fiscal end.

Provisions for different departments under the State plan in the supplementary budget was `1,185 crore during 2010-11. But the departments surrendered `1,190 crore as a result of which funds earmarked for several schemes remained unutilised. In the next financial year, 2011-12, the gap between unutilised funds and supplementary provisions increased further. While supplementary provisions of `1,801 crore were made for different departments, `2,177 crore remained unutilised by the year end.

Similar trend continued in 2012-13 and 2013-14 when various developmental departments could not spend the funds originally made in the budget, but supplementary provisions were made. In 2012-13, `2,854 crore remained unutilised against allocation of `2,677 crore. The surrendered amount in 2013-14 was `1,701 crore against the supplementary provision of `2,809 crore.

However, unutilised funds under different departments by the end of 2014-15 financial year was `10,469 crore while the supplementary provisions were `1,494. Similar situation prevailed in 2015-16 with an allocation of `8,374 crore in supplementary budget while the unutilised amount was `8,170 crore. Supplementary provisions were `5,150 crore in 2016-17 and surrendered amount was `6,834 crore.

Such large amounts remained unutilised between 2014-15 to 2016-17 when the State Government had made apathy and budget cuts by the Centre for welfare schemes an issue against BJP-led NDA Government. The State Government placed a budget of `1,06,910.87 crore in 2017-18 and again placed a supplementary budget of `9828.57 crore on November 30, last year.

Leader of Opposition in the Assembly and chairperson of Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Narasingh Mishra said such irregularities are noticed in government spending. Sometimes government spends more than the allocated funds while on several occasions supplementary provisions are made when funds allocated in the original budget are not spent, he said and added that the PAC has asked the government not to repeat this future.