Indian Express 18.05.2010
State to seek Rs 3000 cr for annual plan
Express News Service Tags : annual plan outlay Posted: Tue May 18 2010, 06:17 hrs
Lucknow:The state will seek a hike of Rs 3,000 crore in its annual plan outlay for the 2010-11 fiscal. For 2009-10, the Planning Commission had approved an outlay of Rs 39,000 crore. A team of officials, led by Chief Secretary Atul Gupta, will meet Planning Commission member BK Chaturvedi on Tuesday for the approval of the plan.
“We have increased the outlay for economic services by 8.5 per cent and for social services by 8.4 per cent,” said the Chief Secretary. “We hope the Centre will provide us the required resources for the state’s development.”
The economic services include agriculture, rural development, irrigation and flood control, energy, industry, minerals and transport while the social services include education, medical and public health, water supply and sanitation and urban development.
The outlay for economic services has been proposed at Rs 25,680 crore — 61 per cent of the total plan outlay. The outlay for the social services has been proposed to be a little over Rs 16,000 crore, 38 per cent of the outlay.
Of the Rs 39,000 crore for the last fiscal, the Central share was as high as Rs 20,000 crore. But there was a substantial gap in funding by the Centre, the Chief Secretary said when asked about the poor utilisation of budgeted funds for development schemes.A jumbo team of over 200 officials has already left for Delhi. In October 2009 too, a large team had visited Delhi in connection with the annual plan approval.
“They included principal secretaries and secretaries of 45 departments, heads of department, officials from the Finance Departments and over two dozen officials from the Planning Department,” said an official.
In the past, the state’s chief minister attended the meeting with the Planning Commission’s deputy chairman to discuss the size and details of the annual plan. But Mayawati discontinued the practice.
Following this, the Commission, too, scaled down its representation and the state officials hold the discussion with B K Chaturvedi, one of the commission members.
Due to the parliament elections in May 2009, the approval of the annual plan outlay was delayed. It was finalised only in October.
