Engage with GoI for timely release of Central Share: CS
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, June 27: To give further impetus to the developmental activities across the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, the Government has pegged the target of completion of 32615 projects during the current financial year. Moreover, all the departments have been directed to engage with the respective Ministries in the Government of India in order to ensure timely release of Central Share under the Centrally Sponsored Schemes.
As per the official document, in a recent meeting chaired by the Chief Secretary Dr Arun Kumar Mehta it was informed that the annual expenditure under Capex Budget is showing an increasing trend since 2019-20 which is translating into higher number of project completion.
“The number of projects completed under UT sector has risen from 6933 in the year 2019-20 to 22766 in the year 2022-23 and the current year’s target has been pegged at 32615 which is substantial increase over the last year’s achievements”, the document said, adding “a time series data has been prepared on the projects completed since 2010-11 which reveals that while there has been marginal increase in the number of projects completed in the year 2010-11 to 2019-20, the progress in the completion of projects has been phenomenal from the year 2019-20 onwards which bears witness to the speedy development after the abrogation of Article370”.
Commenting on the achievements, the Chief Secretary, in the meeting, said that physical completion of projects/works has witnessed substantial improvement in comparison to achievements made during the previous years, which has ensured quick institution of public infrastructure and public delivery system.
However, Chief Secretary expressed dismay that despite repeated directions, the scheme based budget formulation and budget monitoring has not been adopted which could give a clear understanding about the budget utilization. He emphasized the need of integrating all works/activities funded under different sources including Centrally Sponsored Schemes into one platform so that public can have eye on the spending made on infrastructure development in UT of J&K.
In order to bring more clarity in the Capex Budget 2023-24 formulation, the Chief Secretary, as per the official document, has directed all the Administrative Departments to shift from department oriented budgeting to scheme based budgeting. He further issued directions for completion of process of disaggregating the department oriented budget into scheme base budget so that budget monitoring is done in more result oriented manner.
About release of unspent funds under Centrally Sponsored Schemes, the Chief Secretary has directed that in order to ensure timely utilization of funds under Centrally Sponsored Schemes all the departments should take up the matter of revalidation of unspent balance with the Finance Department so that funds are timely revalidated and released to pave the way for further release of funds from the Government of India.
According to the document, in order to ensure the timely release of Central Share under CSS, the Chief Secretary has directed all the departments to engage with their respective Ministries in Government of India to assess about the likely budget earmarked for J&K that can be released for respective scheme and also directed the departments to ensure the uploading of legacy data on the respective portals in a time bound manner.
After taking into consideration various issues highlighted by the Administrative Secretaries regarding the functioning of BEAMS, the Chief Secretary has directed that a system should be designed so that all the ongoing spill over activities are directly fetched into the next year’s budget and gets reflected on BEAMS portal for their respective departments so that only new works are required to be uploaded on BEAMS portal.
Further, all the departments have been told to report the issues faced by them while operating the BEAMS so that the same are fixed for which information Technology Department will coordinate with the NIC and Budget Section.
All the Administrative Departments have also been asked to issue instructions to their DDOs/Planning Officers for regular updation of physical status of works on BEAMS portal so that month wise details of works completed are readily available.
“In order to ensure the uniform utilization of Capex Budget over the entire financial year and to avoid the rush of expenditure in last quarter particularly in the month of March, all Administrative Departments shall hold monthly review meetings in their respective departments”, read the directions of the Chief Secretary.
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