Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi on Thursday presented the annual budget for the financial year 2024-25 with a total outlay of Rs 2.65 Lakh crore, with focus on agriculture, health, education and infrastructure.
While presenting the maiden budget of the new BJP government, Shri Majhi said the budget estimates for the year 2024-25 is about 15 per cent more than the budget estimates for 2023-24 (Rs 2.30 lakh crore).
Out of the total budget estimates, Programme Expenditure is Rs 1.55 lakh crore, administrative expenditure is proposed at Rs 97,725 crore, an outlay of Rs 3,900 crore for Disaster Risk Management Funds while Transfers from State will have an outlay of Rs.8,375 crore.
Presenting the Agriculture Budget, the Chief Minister said agriculture and allied sector is the largest single employment sector of the State and holds the key to socioeconomic development of the State. This sector employs 45.80% of the total workforce and contributes 22.5% to the Gross State Value Added (GSVA) for the State.
“Our Government recognises the significance of this sector and its overall impact on the State’s economy. Therefore, I propose to increase the allocation under agriculture and allied sectors by more than 36% from Rs.24,829 crore in 2023-24 to Rs.33,919 crore in 2024-25,” he said.
The total budget outlay is proposed to be financed mainly through revenue receipts of Rs.2,11,000 crore and borrowing and other receipts of Rs 54,000 crore. The fiscal deficit is estimated to be 3.5 per cent of GSDP for the year 2024-25, he pointed out.
He said the total revenue receipts for the year 2024-25 include State’s Own tax for Rs.60,000 crore, Own Non-tax revenue of Rs.58,000 crore, State’s share in Central taxes for Rs.55,232 crore and grants from Centre for Rs.37,768 crore.
Shri Majhi proposed to give a three-fold increase in total allocation for Women & Child Development Department and Mission Shakti Department together from Rs.6,224 crore in 2023-24 to Rs.17,942 crore in 2024-25.
A total sum of Rs 21,200 crore has been proposed for public healthcare, which is an increase of about 32 percent over previous financial year 2023-24. It amounts to 8% of the State Budget, which matches with the normative allocation for the sector as per recommendation of 15th Finance Commission.
“As promised in our pre-election manifesto, our government has decided to implement the Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) in convergence with the State’s own Health Assurance Scheme Gopabandhu Jana Arogya Yojana to provide cashless healthcare in Government and private health facilities to all eligible families,” announced the CM.
Under AB PMJAY, we will be able to avail funds from the central government in the ratio of 60:40 reducing burden on the state budget. People of Odisha including those staying outside the states will have access to cashless treatment at over 27,000 empanelled Government and private hospitals across all States of the country, especially providing huge relief to the migrant labourers/workers residing outside Odisha.
An outlay of Rs500 crore has been proposed for the ABPM-JAY and Rs 3,056 crore for the state sector scheme in the budget.