By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, November 10, 2016 : Odisha’s Plan budget utilization up to October, 2016 has touched around 46% of the budget provision up by 18.37% compared to the utilization during the same period in last financial year.

Official sources said around Rs 20872 crore have been utilized under state plan up to October, 2016 in this fiscal which is around 46% of the total budget estimate. The utilization in agriculture and allied sectors has been around 49% of the budget estimate i.e. Rs 5393 crore in real terms marking an increase by 5% over the expenditure of last fiscal during the same period.

The infrastructure spending has also gone up to around 56% of the budget estimate marking a growth of around 2% over the last year. The utilization in this sector has been to the tune of Rs. 6043 crore in real terms up to October, 2016. Social sector spending has also touched Rs 8373 crore marking an increase of around 4% over the last year. The total revenue collection up to October, 2016 has been around Rs. 15153 crore.

This was revealed in the all secretaries meeting held here on Thursday. Presiding over the meeting chief secretary, Aditya Prasad Padhi directed all departments to keep close watch over the field level implementation of the flagship programmes. He also asked the revenue earning departments to scale up revenue collection to meet higher expenditure in infrastructure and agriculture sectors.

The departments were also directed to put more public services online and develop mobile apps for the public services notified under Odisha Right to Public Services Act so that citizens can easily apply from their own mobiles.

The state government has put several investment attracting policies on table during last couple of months. Some of these policies include pharmaceutical investment policy, health sector investment policy, solar policy, bio-tech policy etc. Chief Secretary also advised the departments to transact more number of files through OSAWAS and minimize the use of hard files. The Development Commissioner R. Balakrishnan participating in discussion advised the departments to review the existing multiple schemes and asses how many of them can be converged and how many of them are redundant.