The Odisha budget has gone green and hi-tech.
The Naveen Patnaik government has come up with a mobile phone app on the budget. The app is available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
While the budget highlights the use of technology by the Odisha government, the green initiative was underscored by Patnaik in a tweet.
A few hours ahead of the presentation of the Rs 1.50 lakh crore budget in the Assembly on Tuesday, Naveen tweeted: “Committed to build a green and sustainable future. Odisha has saved around 1000 big trees by switching over paperless budgeting in 2020-21. Digital methods reduced printing of at least 75 lakh pages, ultimately saving hundreds of trees.”
For the first time in the history of the Odisha Assembly, a finance minister read out the budget speech from an iPad.
Finance minister Niranjan Pujari also presented the Odisha budget 2020 in a pen drive to chief minister Patnaik. MLAs were provided with iPads to read the budget. However, only six MLAs were seen reading the budget speech from the iPad. The IT minister was seen reading the budget book instead of depending on the iPAD.
Briefing the media in the presence of the finance minister, finance secretary Ashok K.K. Meena said: “The legislators will be provided with the required training on the technology.”
Explaining how it saved 75 lakh pages, Meena said: “Earlier we used to publish around 600 copies of the budget, each comprising nearly 10,000 pages. This time we have published only 100 copies. We are working on reducing it to zero and making it completely paperless. It has a huge impact on climate. We are yet to calculate the money that we saved.”
The budget lays focus on the development of pilgrim town Puri and makes budgetary provision to transform it into a world heritage city with projects like Shree Sethu, Jagannath Ballav Pilgrim Centre, multilevel car parking, redevelopment of the municipal market, beach front vending zone and the redevelopment of Swargadwara (cremation ground).
Of the total investment of plan of Rs 3,208 crore for Puri, the government has earmarked Rs 695 crore for the town in the financial year 2020-21.
Finance minister Pujari has made it clear that his government aims to transform the prestigious SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack into a state of the art world class facility with 3,000 beds. The government will spend Rs 1,000 crore on the project over the next two years.
The budget also focuses on the development of farmers, earmarks funds for electricity for all, health, urban and rural development, drinking water, sanitation, education and other social sectors. Odisha also became the first state to introduce a nutrition budget document and a climate code budget document.
The finance minister said there would be a revenue surplus of Rs 6,175 crore and the fiscal deficit was estimated to be at 3.4 per cent. Odisha’s growth rate is expected to be around 7-7.5 per cent.