The Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system has helped the government save Rs 2.7 trillion since 2014-15, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Thursday.
“When DBT was operationalised in 2013-14, Rs 7,367 crore were transferred using the platform. From that amount, DBT transfers have increased five times by 2014-15 itself and in the last financial year, Rs 7.16 trillion have been transferred,” Sitharaman told Lok Sabha.
In the last nine years of NDA government, over Rs 30 trillion have been transferred to beneficiaries through the DBT mechanism which maps the mobile number and Aadhaar number of beneficiaries to weed out bogus beneficiaries.
“By plugging leakages, the welfare programmes allowed the government to save Rs 2.7 trillion,” Sitharaman said, alleging that the then Congress-led government never wanted the DBT to succeed as leakages filled their coffers.
“Congress never wanted it (DBT) to be implemented. They just did lip service. Well-oiled Congress dynastic family was benefitting from leakages,” Sitharaman said.
The DBT-induced savings are giving the managers of government finances significant relief, to improve the quality of spending and offering benefits to the deserving beneficiaries, given the government’s focus on accelerating capital expenditure by containing revenue spending.
To put this in perspective, the DBT-enabled savings in the FY15-FY21 period are slightly higher than the Centre’s expenditure on higher education during the three years through FY23 or about 40% higher than Rs 1.97 trillion earmarked for Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes for 14 sectors in ten years through 2030.
Out of the cumulative DBT-enabled gains of Rs 2.73 trillion, weeding out of 42 million fake ration cards under the public distribution system for food grains helped in saving Rs 1.35 trillion (50% of the total). Removal of 41.1 million fake beneficiaries under LPG-Pahal scheme helped in savings to the tune of Rs 72,910 crore (27%). Among others, the deletion of duplicate beneficiaries under the job guarantee scheme (MGNREGS) yielded gains of 40,987 crore (15%) and18,700 crore (7%) due to a reduction in the sale of subsidised fertiliser.