BHUBANESWAR: With elections a little more than a year away, Finance Minister Niranjan Pujari on Friday presented the highest-ever budget of Rs 2.30 lakh crore for 2023-24 projecting a eight per cent growth in state’s economy.
“This budget focuses on achieving rapid and inclusive growth through development of human resources, investment in physical and social infrastructure and health care for all,” the Finance minister said while presenting the first full-fledged budget in the Assembly after the Covid-pandemic.
The minister said Odisha’s economy with sharp recovery from the impact of pandemic with growth of 11.5 per cent in 2021-22 being consistently higher than national rate has been the growth engine of the country. With projected growth rate of eight per cent in 2023-24, Odisha can be one of the brightest spots of Indian economy. Besides, with consistent higher economic growth, the per capita income gap at national and state level has narrowed down from 31.6 per cent in 2015- 16 to 11.7 per cent in 2022-23.
“With this trend, we can expect the state’s per capita income to surpass the national average in coming few years,” he stated.The Finance minister’s optimism comes from growth in both tax and non-tax revenue allowing him to announce 20 new initiatives - the first-ever in a budget - with an allocation of over Rs 7,200 crore. Stating that Odisha is among a few states that are revenue surplus and capable of large scale investment in people centric and growth oriented programmes, Pujari said the transformation was made possible due to futuristic and people-oriented model of governance.
He said, the huge outlay is proposed to be financed through revenue receipts of Rs 1,84,500 crore and borrowing other receipts of Rs 45,500 crore. The revenue receipts includes state’s share of central taxes of Rs 46,251 crore, state’s own tax of Rs 53,000 crore, own non-tax revenue of Rs 52,500 crore and grants from centre of Rs 32,749 crore.
Though the budget size has increased by 15 per cent as compared to last year’s Rs 2 lakh crore, the Finance minister has kept the administrative expenditure under control at Rs 94,000 crore in 2023-24 while increasing the programme expenditure to Rs 1,25,000 crore. Stating that the allocation for the programme expenditure is around 54 per cent of the total budgetary outlay, the minister said it has increased by 67 per cent in just two years.
The administrative expenditure proposed at Rs 94,000 crore in 2023-24 includes Rs 32,449 crore for salaries, Rs 19,967 crore for pension, Rs 7,241 crore for interest payment and Rs 13,464 crore for maintenance of capital assets. Claiming that the policy of fiscal prudence coupled with investment prioritisation has yielded transformative outcomes, the minister said Odisha increased programme budget by 35 times from Rs 3,538 crore in 2000-01 to Rs 1,25,000 crore in 2023-24 budget estimates.
Similarly, capital outlay has gone up by more than 60 times from Rs 834 crore to Rs 51,683 crore during the same period. The proportion of capital expenditure in Odisha to total budget is the highest among all major states in the country, he said.
The capital outlay in 2023-24 is Rs 51,683 crore, which is around six per cent of GSDP. Additionally, loans and advances, grants for creation of capital assets and other expenditure for capital formation together account for Rs 12,421 crore, which is 1.4 per cent of GSDP.
While the outlay for disaster response fund will be Rs 3,700 crore, transfers from state will be Rs 7,300 crore. “We propose to transfer around Rs 3,132 crore on the basis of the recommendations of 15th Finance Commission and around Rs 4,052 crore on the recommendations of the 5th State Finance Commission to the rural and urban local bodies of the State,” he stated.
In department allocations, SCs and ST Development received the highest allocation of Rs 38,437 crore. The minister also proposed an agriculture budget of Rs 24,829 crore for 2023-24 which is 20 per cent more than last year. This includes Rs 2,000 crore for the initiative as revolving fund to be utilised for paddy procurement operations besides the borrowings by Odisha State Civil Supply Corporation (OSCSC). Besides, Rs 1,879 crore has been proposed KALIA scheme.