Bhubaneswar: As the new Government is all set to present its first Annual Budget of the State in Odisha Legislative Assembly, Principal Secretary Finance, Vishal Kumar Dev has asked all the Departments to submit their proposals by June end.
Principal Secretary Shri Dev has written a letter to all Additional Chief Secretaries (ACSs), Principal Secretaries and Secretaries of various Departments to submit proposals for formulation of Revised Estimates for 2023-24 and Budget Estimates for 2024-25 by this month end.
“All Administrative Departments are, therefore, requested to complete internal consultations and submit the additional requirement/ change request proposals, if any, latest by 30th June, 2024 for formulation of Annual Budget, 2024-25. All such proposals shall be endorsed to the Planning & Convergence Department and Finance Department,” he said.
Due to the General Elections, 2024, the Budget Estimates (Vote-on-Account), 2024-25 was presented in the Assembly on February 8, 2024. The On-Account Budget was, then, passed on February 9, 2024 so as to incur expenditure for the first four months of the financial year 2024-25 on existing establishment, schemes and projects, Shri Dev pointed out.
The Principal Secretary said that a new Government has already been formed, the Annual Budget for the Financial Year 2024-25 would be presented in the upcoming session of the 17th Assembly. This would require the Administrative Departments to reprioritize their Budget proposals, he stated.
Stating that there have also been instances of re-appropriations so as to meet any additional requirement by surrender under appropriate units of expenditure, Principal Secretary Shri Dev asked the departments to address all these issues in the Budget formulation process, so that public authorities would continue to incur expenditure for delivery of public services without any difficulty.
The Administrative Departments were directed to do internal consultations to ascertain the change in the existing budget provisions and submission of such change requests to the Planning & Convergence Department and Finance Department for further scrutiny.
In case there is no need for change in the existing Budget provisions, the Administrative Departments need not submit any proposal, he clarified.
Departmental consultations for scrutiny of such proposals would be taken up during the early part of July, 2024 in order to ensure timely completion of budgetary exercises for preparation and presentation of the full-fledged Annual Budget, 2024-25 in the Assembly.
Earlier, Deputy Chief Minister K V Singh Deo had informed that the previous Government had presented the vote on an account which will manage State finance till July. “We have to present another vote on the bill and then we will go for a full budget,” he said.
The State Government will prepare its full fledged budget only after the Central budget is tabled in the Parliament, the DCM had stated.
“We have to consider the allocations and funds made by the Centre in the budget before preparing our budget,” Shri Singh Deo said.
The interim budget was presented with estimating the total budget outlay for the next financial year at Rs 2.55 lakh crore, which is about 11 percent more than the annual budget of 2023-24.