BHUBANESWAR: Finance Minister Niranjan Pujari on Wednesday presented the interim budget (vote-on-account) of Rs 1.06 lakh crore for the first four months of 2022-23 to defray the expenditure on existing establishments, continuing schemes and projects during the period. The total budget outlay for 2022-23 is pegged at Rs 2 lakh crore against Rs 1.7 lakh crore in 2021-22.
Pujari said the government’s focus on industries as well as MSME sector, social sector, employment generation and higher investment in infrastructure will help the State economy register a nominal growth of more than 12 percent of the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP).
The State’s dependence on Central transfers has reduced with the State’s own revenue contributing about 58 percent to the total revenue pool, Pujari said and added that the tax GSDP ratio for 2022-23 will be 6.4 percent.
While revenue receipts have been projected at Rs 1.63 lakh crore, revenue expenditure for the year is estimated at Rs 1.44 lakh crore in the interim budget, leaving a surplus of Rs 19,618 crore. The revenue surplus has been projected at 2.7 percent of the GSDP.
The FM said that the fiscal deficit estimated at Rs 21,588 crore is 3 percent of the GSDP. Similarly, the capital outlay has been projected at Rs 40,011 crore which is 5.6 percent of the GSDP.
A major highlight of the budget is an outlay of Rs 1 lakh crore for programme expenditure which is 33 percent more than the last year’s allocation. Pujari said that 100 percent of the budget expenditure for calamity-related expenses and 50 percent of the budget expenditure for all other schemes have been taken in the vote-on-account.
He informed that administrative expenditure in 2022-23 has increased to Rs 89,620 crore from Rs 75,000 crore in 2021-22. This includes Rs 29,248 crore for salary, Rs 18,221 crore for pension, Rs 8,467 crore for interest payment and Rs 5,856 crore for maintenance of capital assets.
He announced an allocation of Rs 20,344 crore for agriculture and allied sectors, an increase from Rs 17,468 crore in 2021-22. However, provision for the education and skills sector has come down marginally from Rs 24,370 crore in 2021-22 to Rs 23,947 crore in 2022-23.
The corpus of the disaster response fund has also increased from Rs 6,950 crore in 2021-22 to Rs 7,170 crore in 2022-23. Similarly, Rs 12,241 crore has been allocated for the health sector which is about 6.1 percent of the total size of the budget.
Stating that 10 new medical colleges have been set up in the last five years taking the total to 13, the FM said that in the coming years around 2,000 MBBS doctors will be graduating from these institutes every year. Similarly, the sanctioned strength of nurses and paramedic staff has also more than doubled during the last five years.
Besides, the availability of drinking water has been given priority in the budget with an allocation of Rs 8,255 crore for piped water supply projects under BASUDHA and Jal Jeevan Mission. Allocation of Rs 33,203 crore has been made for the development of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes for identified schemes in the programme budget.
The focus in the budget has been on infrastructure development, the Finance Minister said. An allocation of Rs 300 crore has been made for the Biju Expressway project besides Rs 1,408 crore and Rs 200 crore for ABADHA and EKAMRA schemes. Similarly, Rs 200 crore has been provided for the SAMALEI scheme.
Allocation for other major infrastructure schemes include Rs 1,688 crore for Biju Setu Yojana, Rs 1,100 crore for Pradhan Mantri Grameen Sadak Yojana and Rs 675 crore for Mukhyamantri Sadak Yojana.
Under the education sector, Rs 521 crore has been provided under Mo School Abhiyan, Rs 439 crore for Smart Classes in selected 100 schools of excellence, Rs 11,098 crore of GIA to non-government high schools, Rs 420 crore for Odisha Adarsha Vidyalaya and Rs 1,283 crore of grain-in-aid to non-government colleges. For the KALIA scheme, an allocation of Rs 1,874 crore has been made.
