J&K House clears ₹95,666-cr Budget, focus on fiscal reforms
JAMMU : The Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly on Saturday passed ₹ 95,666.97 crore budget for the state for 2018-19 with 20% rise over last year’s budget size of ₹79,472 crore.
The Jammu and Kashmir appropriation bill-2018 moved by finance minister Haseeb Drabu in the House in this regard was passed with voicevote.
Pertinently, for the first time in J&K’s legislative history, the finance minister has linked the appropriation bill with wide-ranging expenditure reforms to ensure checks and balances for efficient fiscal management and speed up spending to make productive use of resources for the larger public good.
Earlier, Drabu on January 11 this year, presented the budget proposals for 2018-19 in the House, comprising a revenue component of ₹51,244.72 crore and capital component of ₹44,422.24 crore.
Enumerating the fiscal reforms factored in the appropriation bill this year, Drabu said the finance and the planning, development and monitoring developments shall release both revenue and capital budget to all the administrative departments within two weeks of the passage of the appropriation bill.
He said the administrative departments will, in turn, ensure release of funds to the subordinate offices within four weeks of their receipt, failing which these funds will be deemed to have been trans- ferred to the intended drawing and disbursing offices (DDOs) on the dates they ought to have been released by the administrative departments /controlling officers.
“Planning development and monitoring department will ensure that all plan allocations to be made in the next fiscal bear proper classification, indicating, name of the work/scheme against detailed head-115 works,” he said.
“In the absence of the schematic classification, the relevant Capex release shall be deemed as invalid and not open to being operational is at ion ,” he added.
› Valuable suggestions of the legislators will help streamline state’s fiscal framework, economic course.
HASEEB DRABU, J&K finance minister