Nitish: Big dreams

Patna, Jan. 27: Bihar will have an annual plan worth Rs 28,000 crore in the coming fiscal (2012-13) though it is still way short of achieving its target for the current financial year.

This was announced by chief minister Nitish Kumar at a high-level meeting held today where he reviewed the plan expenditure made so far in the current fiscal (2011-12).

Going by the gradual increase in the plan size in the past six years, the state would witness an almost seven-fold increase in the plan size in 2012-13 in comparison to that in 2005-06 when it stood at Rs 4,490.8 crore.

The annual plan size for 2006-07 stood at Rs 8,459 crore and the corresponding figure went up to Rs 9,700.25 crore next year. The trend continued in 2008-09 when Bihar made an annual plan of Rs 12,335.9 crore and this figure touched the Rs 16,000 mark in 2009-10.

Continuing this trend, the state formulated an annual plan of Rs 20,000 crore in 2010-11 and in the current fiscal (2011-12), which will come to an end on March 31, the state had formulated an annual plan of Rs 24,000 crore.

During Friday’s review meeting, it came to light that of the targeted planned expenditure of Rs 24,000 crore in the current fiscal, the consolidated expenditure by different government departments till December 2011 was Rs 12,083.82 crore, which is almost 50 per cent of the target with less than three months left in which to spend the remaining money.

“Prima facie, the expenditure level may appear low in the first nine months, but a micro-analysis would throw up a completely different picture,” a senior state government official, who was part of Friday’s deliberations, told The Telegraph. “Around Rs 7,000 crore of the remaining fund of the current fiscal has to come from the Centre and as soon as that is released to the state, the funds would be utilised.”

Citing an example, he said of the total central assistance of Rs 7,000 crore under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Bihar had so far received just about Rs 1,600 crore. Generally central funds are released towards the end of the fiscal year, he added.

As far as constraints on part of the state government is concerned, the finance department was asked to look into the issues because of which other ministries were not being allowed to use the funds due to objections raised by it.

“The finance department would look into these issues on a priority basis so that funds could be released at the earliest to the departments concerned,” said the official.

It is not that the plan size fixed at the beginning of the fiscal year is sacrosanct. Rather, it has been a practice to review the plan expenditure towards the end of February and, if required, certain changes are introduced in the size keeping in mind the ground realities.

“During the February review meeting, a detailed analysis of funds flow is done and based on a realistic picture, the plan size is adjusted accordingly,” said the official.

The state had tweaked the annual plan size for 2010-11 and it was reduced to Rs 18,300 crore from the original estimate of Rs 20,000 crore. Something similar was done in 2009-10 when the plan size was reduced to about Rs 14,000 crore from the original Rs 16,000 crore.

“One should not be surprised if something similar is done towards the end of the current fiscal after the February review meeting,” said the official.