Srinagar, Oct 13 (PTI) Jammu and Kashmir finance ministerHaseeb Drabu today said a prudent public expenditure policywill play a growth-inducing role in stopping the economicslowdown.
Due to the economic slowdown and the absence of privateinvestment, public expenditure policy will play a growth-inducing role in reinvigorating the economy.
Although options are limited but they do exist in theform of investment or stimulus package, Drabu said at apreparatory meeting of the Finance Department officials forBudget (2018-19) here.
He said in the context of Jammu and Kashmir, theirrational policy of making provisions for spending on assetcreation without factoring in the budgetary allocation resultsin liabilities and a directionless expenditure policy in thelong run.
The government is re-looking at the ways of spendingmoney and reorienting the way of thinking about budget, whichtriggered this exercise, the minister said.
Earlier, there used to have 29 heads for demand forgrants with no meaning from public expenditure policy point ofview. Now, these have been combined into five sectors ofdemand for grants to give them some meaning, Drabu said.
He said he had very fruitful meetings with his cabinetcolleagues on resource allocation for Administrative Services,Infrastructure Development, Social Development, EconomicDevelopment and Finance.
He said the state budget will become a pure publicexpenditure document in coming years.
Drabu said the focus of next year's budget will be oncompleting the existing projects and maintenance ofcapacities.
"Identify the projects pending from last more than 10years, those pending for between five to ten years and theones which are being executed for less than five years. Youwork out the cost of completion so that the finance departmentcan take a view. If you can complete even half of the existingprojects, it will be a huge achievement for the government,"he said.
Instead of taking last year's budget and giving thefigures a 10 per cent hike, break the expenditure allocationto align the expenditure with the priorities of the minister.
The finance minister said the spending capacity of Jammuand Kashmir is limited and there are enormous institutionalconstraints and leakages due to which the outcome of publicexpenditure in the form of asset creation is limited. PTI MIJMR.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.