CHENNAI: Unutilised funds amounting to Rs 2,000 crore have been unearthed by a Special Task Force (STF), Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan announced on Monday. The task force was constituted to identify government funds stashed outside the treasury department’s ambit.
Addressing reporters at the Secretariat, Rajan termed the STF’s findings an interim report. “This is just a trailer. We will be coming out with more such findings,” he said. As government funds are often shifted to accounts outside the view of the treasury system, Rajan said the STF built a database by collating data of bank accounts where government money had been parked as on March 31, 2021 from multiple sources such as banks, district collectors, government departments, and other quasi-governmental entities.
The minister said an Integrated Financial and Human Resources Management System would be put in place so there is no idling of funds in the future. The system would involve digitisation of the treasury system by integrating it with human resource and budget management.
“Some schemes will be implemented through intermediate agencies of the government such as companies, societies, and local bodies. For this, a State-level Public Financial Management System will be established in association with agency banks. The bank balances of the agencies for implementing the scheme will be in plain sight of the finance department after withdrawal from the government treasury,” he said.
Further, the minister said the release of funds from the treasury will be done only after the funds from the previous withdrawal completely utilised. If the funds are not used within the specified time period, they will be returned to the government.
Stating that the term of the STF would be extended till March 31, 2022, Rajan said it will continue to audit reported data, specifically under categories of ‘available balances’ and ‘liabilities’, and reconcile the data collected from the department heads, district collectors and banks. “It is possible that further amounts of unutilised funds could be identified for return to the government treasury,” he said.
State govt will introduce a policy for MSME loans: FM
Thehe Chief Minister’s Economic Advisory Council has backed the State government’s initiatives in data-centric governance, he said. “As part of the initiative, beneficiary-linked databases of government programmes such as the Public Distribution System and Old Age Pension scheme are analysed by the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency.
Databases, such as the Civil Registration System, which maintains births and deaths, can enable new additions (to the families) and deletions (on deaths in the family) to be carried out directly into the Family Card database. This would be cost-effective and result in effective implementation,” he said. The minister said that there is a plan for the government to seek a payments bank licence from the RBI.
“The quantum of welfare payments is huge and if the State has its own bank, we can see how much money is spent,” he said. Asked if fuel prices impacted the government’s expenditure with inflation setting in, he said there was no impact as the prices hadn’t risen drastically. Rajan said the State will introduce a policy by to guarantee MSME loans. The sector was urging the government to float a Credit Guarantee Corporation with large capital to rescue struggling small industries.
‘Pension given to Deceased persons’
PTR said, over the last few months, it was found that deceased persons were receiving pensions and monthly allocation of rice. He said while analysing crop and jewellery loan data, several irregularities were found