The Planning Commission has fixed the current financial year’s plan size at Rs 3,000 crore for the Union Territory. This was finalised at a meeting between the Planning Commission headed by Montek Singh Ahluwalia and the government of Puducherry led by Chief Minister N Rangasamy, at New Delhi on Monday. The current plan size is Rs 250 crore above the previous year’s allocation of Rs 2,750 crore.
The Commission also agreed to sanction an additional central assistance of Rs 200 crore, which includes Rs 100 crore for the completion of civil works at the Government medical college, and another Rs 100 crore toward the Thirunallar temple town project, the CM told Express over phone from New Delhi.Besides this, the Planning Commission also permitted the government to avail a loan of `800 crore from the World Bank to restore infrastructure damaged during the Cyclone Thane, he said. The Puducherry government had initially proposed a plan size of Rs 3,025 crore as against the budgetary resources of Rs 1,925 crore. Rangasamy had urged the Planning commission to allocate Rs 1,100 crores over and above the available resources to meet the UT’s needs for infrastructure-related projects. “The limited non-plan gap grant coupled with less plan assistance as compared to the UT’s own resources make things difficult for the UT”, he told the meeting.
Ranagsamy had further sought Rs 700 crore for infrastructural needs. This amount was required to restore infrastructure severely damaged by the Cyclone Thane. Besides this, the government had also proposed the construction of flyovers and road overbridges in Puducherry and Karaikal. The Thirunallar temple town project needed to be completed at the earliest.
The budget is now likely to be presented in the second week of July.