The Orissa government is proposing to peg the annual plan outlay at an ambitious Rs 9,500 crore for 2009-10 compared with Rs 7,500 crore this fiscal. The state government?s official level team headed by development commissioner TK Mishra has started discussions with the Planning Commission in this regard.
The state finance department had proposed a plan outlay of Rs 8,100 crore taking the resources position into account. The tax revenue for 2009-10 has been calculated at Rs 8237.94 crore, a 12% growth over the current fiscal. The non-tax revenue is expected to be around Rs 2,204.23 crore, 7% increase.
However, the government is proposing to enhance the plan outlay by going for higher market borrowing to fund the plan expenditure. ?We are working out the plan outlay for 2009-10. The vote-on-account, which will be presented in the state Assembly on February 12, would take into account the total plan outlay,? said state finance minister Prafulla Chandra Ghadei. ?Adequate provisions will be made for implementation of all the development programmes,? he added. Curiously, the state government is proposing a higher plan outlay for 2009-10 at a time when the same for the current fiscal outlay has been revised downwardly. The outlay for the year, which was Rs 7,500 crore, has been revised to Rs 7,271 crore.
However, former finance minister Panchanan Kanungo is quite critical of the government?s attempt to peg the plan outlay at a higher mark. It is quite unlikely that the government would be able to achieve a higher outlay when it is not able to work out the current outlay, he said. ?Since the state is going to elections in a couple of months from now, the government is not taking the risk to peg the outlay at a realistic level,? he said.
As against a total plan outlay of Rs 32,225 crore fixed for the 11th Plan period to 2011-12, the state had achieved Rs 5,520 crore in 2007-08, and pegged the same at Rs 7,500 crore for 2008-09. So, Orissa needs to achieve higher plan outlay during the coming three years to accomplish the plan period outlay target.