Budget aims to give boost to rural sector
CHANDIGARH:The Haryana budget presented by the Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP government on Monday aimed at giving a boost to rural sector.
Presenting the 2017-18 budget, which classified for the first time the rural and urban areas, in the state assembly, finance minister Capt Abhimanyu said he had attempted to identify the expenditure incurred by eight departments in rural areas and hiked the outlays for these.
He said that in 2016-17, the elementary education was estimated to spend its 91% outlay (₹ 7,296 crore), secondary education 88% (₹3,870 crore) and higher education department 17 % (₹288 crore) of the total ₹ 11,825.67 crore in rural areas. However, this year’s budget has a total outlay of ₹14,005 crore for education – an 18 % increase against the previous budget.
The women and child department was to spend its 87% (₹ 1,009.66 crore) in the revised estimates (RE) of previous budget, while this budget has an outlay of ₹1,247.24 crore, which is 23.53 % higher.
The social justice and empowerment department had 70% (₹ 2,947 crore) in the 2016 budget, while in this budget its outlay is ₹4,875 crore (16 % higher) and welfare of scheduled castes and backward classes, which had 43 % (₹331 crore) in the previous budget, has an outlay of ₹736.84 crore in this budget, which is 7.4 % higher.
While the public health engineering department was to spend 38 % (₹513 crore) of the total ₹2,906.52 crore in the 2016-17 revised estimates, this budget has an outlay of ₹3,382.84 crore, up by 16.39%.
For the electronics and IT department, which was estimated to spend 33 % (₹28 crore) of the total outlay of ₹88 crore in the rural areas in the previous budget estimates, there is a hike of 41.57 % in this budget with an outlay of ₹125.56 crore.
The agriculture and allied sector has an allocation of ₹ 3,206.01 crore in 2017-18 as against ₹ 2,698.80 crore in 2016-17 revised estimates, an increase of 18.79 %.
This includes an outlay of ₹ 1,516.01 crore for agriculture, ₹746.88 crore for animal husbandry, ₹396.93 crore for horticulture, ₹457.62 crore for forests and ₹88.57 crore for fisheries.
For the irrigation and water resources sector, there is an increase in outlay by 13.62% from ₹2,397.68 crore in 2,016-17 revised estimates to ₹2,724.26 crore for 2017-18, while for rural development, there is an allocation of ₹4,963.09 crore this time, a whopping increase of 56.69 % over ₹3,167.55 crore in 2016-17 revised estimates.
FM SAYS HE HAS WORKED OUT EXPENSES INCURRED BY EIGHT DEPARTMENTS IN RURAL AREAS AND HIKED THE OUTLAYS FOR THESE