In what may clip the government?s advertisement spend, the finance ministry has asked all the ministries and departments to check the splurge on advertisement and publicity.
Ministries and departments, both central and state, spend about Rs 1,000 crore a year on advertisements, less than a tenth of the Rs 16,000 crore advertisement market in India. One of the biggest hit by this would be the small and medium-sized language publications, which depend heavily on government advertisements.
In fact, the department of expenditure, in an office memorandum to all ministries with a subject head ?economy in expenditure on advertisement & publicity?, said, ?The ministries/departments may generally endeavour to limit the expenditure under the object head ?Advertising & Publicity? to the average on such spending in any 3 out of the previous 5 years, plus a 5% increase. This practice should be followed from 2007-08 onwards until further notice.?
The above note is a follow-up on previous instructions on austerity measures. Taking the matter forward, the department said that a need was felt to prescribe further guidelines for economy measures and accordingly the ministries and departments should plan their advertising and publicity campaign with utmost economy.
The note further said that a publicity campaign should be planned out with the view to provide effective coverage and communication of public interest issues so as to maximise the effectiveness of the expenditure.
According to sources this has been done also keeping in mind that the various wings of the government could work in tandem with each other to plan various campaigns.
The department advised restraint on the use of advertisement, saying the use of a particular medium of communication may be carefully planned with a view to optimally utilising advertising space or time for dissemination of info on government programmes where considered necessary.