After a dip during the pandemic, the Centre's advertising expenditure is back on the rise, hitting Rs 407 crore in 2022-2023.
According to a written reply tabled by Information & Broadcasting Minister Anurag Singh Thakur in the Rajya Sabha, the government, through the Central Bureau of Communication (CBC), spent Rs 155 crore on electronic media, Rs 220 crore on print and Rs 32 crore on outdoor publicity in FY2023.
The Central Bureau of Communication which operates under the Information & Broadcasting Ministry undertakes campaigns to generate awareness on various government policies, programmes and schemes through print, television and digital media.
The latest number represents a return to growth for ad spending by the central government after a decline in the past three years.
Ad spending reached its peak in the pre-election year of 2018-2019, when the government spent a sum of Rs 1,178 crores, which was also the highest in the past five years.
With elections around the corner, the advertising expenditure of the Centre is likely to further shoot up in FY2024.
The expenditure on advertisements during the two years of the Covid-19 pandemic stood at Rs 408 crore in 2020-21 and Rs 315 crore in 2021-2022.
Print media was the most popular mode of advertising with the Centre spending around Rs 1,320 crore on it from 2018-2023.
A sum of Rs 1,253 crore was spent on electronic media, and Rs 442 crore on outdoor publicity, in the same period.
Meanwhile, the Centre has asked all ministries to route 40 per cent of their publicity budget through the CBC. It may be noted that every ministry has its own agency to carry out ad campaigns.
The ministry, however, did not give out the names of national and regional media which had received advertisement contracts and the details of money spent on each media organisation for advertisements.