BHUBANESWAR: The State Government is yet to get a clear picture about the flow of Central funds for 2016-17, creating difficulties in finalising work plans for the year.
Official sources said the State Government has requested the Centre to inform the allocations for Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSSs) by April 30 and set up a single window information mechanism on CSSs.
The Centre has restructured 1500 plan schemes into 300 schemes. Besides, the CSSs have been reduced to only 30. Though the Centre had announced in 2016-17 budget that `2,41,900 crore will be provided to the States for various Centrally Assisted State Plans (CASP), there is no follow up action on this.
Similarly, though the Centre has announced creation of a dedicated long term irrigation fund in NABARD with a corpus of `20,000 crore, modalities of the fund flow from the corpus is yet to be shared with the States.
According to the State Government, the Central share of CSSs should be released in two instalments like Finance Commission grants.
To avoid confusion over funds flow from the Centre, the State Government had changed the system of budget presentation for 2016-17. The Budget was placed on March 18. Appropriation Bill for March and April was passed in the Assembly by March 31. The Assembly standing committees will submit their reports by April 25.
The Budget for the remaining 10 months will be placed in the Assembly basing on the recommendations of the standing committees. It was presumed that Central allocations for different sectors can also be ascertained from the Union Budget which would have been presented by then.
Announcing the change in the budget presentation system, Finance Minister Pradip Amat had announced after an all-party meeting on March 15 that the proposed format will help the Government allocate for different sectors strategically.
The State Government was able know about allocations for different sectors and prepare its budget accordingly during the existence of the Planning Commission. But such a system is not possible under the Niti Aayog.
Allocations for several schemes have been slashed and grants for eight projects stopped by the Centre. Besides, sharing pattern for different schemes have been changed drastically.