By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, March 23, 2018: With the general election scheduled less than a year, the Odisha government on Friday presented a budget with a focus on rural development and empowerment of youth and women.

Finance Minister Sashi Bhusan Behera placed a Rs 1,20,028 crore budget for 2018-19 in the state. Behera also presented a separate agriculture budget worth Rs 16,765 crore, around 134 per cent more than the Rs 7,162 provided in the first farm budget in 2013-14.

The minister further announced that about Rs 8,000 crore is invested through extra budgetary resources every year to make timely payment to farmers towards paddy procurement.

Of the total budgetary expenditure of Rs 1,20,028 crore, the capital outlay for 2018-19 is Rs 24,567 crore which is about 5.5 per cent of the GSDP, Behera said adding loans and advances, grants for creation of capital assets and other expenditure for capital formation together accounts for Rs 9,090 crore, about 2.1 per cent of the GSDP.

The allocation for the expenditure programme exceeds half of the total annual budget, the finance minister said.

“The outlay is proposed to be financed mainly through revenue receipts of Rs 1,00,200 crore and borrowing and other receipts of Rs 19,678 crore,” Behera said.

Explaining the state’s revenue receipts for 2018-19, Behera said it included the state’s share in central taxes of Rs 36,587 crore. The state’s own tax is Rs 28,550 crore while non-tax revenue is Rs 10,300 crore and grants from Centre has been calculated at Rs 24,764 crore.

Behera did not propose any new tax in 2018-19. He, however, did not rule out hike in the rate of existing taxes.

He pointed out that total administrative expenditure is estimated at Rs 50,761 crore in 2018-19 including Rs 22,021 crore for salaries, Rs 11,912 crore for pension, Rs 5,500 crore for interest payment and Rs 4,400 crore for maintenance of capital assets.

Behera said total programme expenditure outlay for the 2018-19 fiscal will be Rs 67,000 crore which included an outlay of 62,000 for government sector and Rs 5,000 crore for public sector undertakings.

After finance department which got Rs 24,530.17 crore, Behera allocated maxium amount of 14,487.10 crore for school and mass education department followed by Panchayati Raj and Drinking Water (Rs 13,725 crore), Water Resources (Rs 10,196.05 crore), Rural Development (Rs 5582.46 crore and Home (Rs 5,274 crore).

While Behera made allocations for different ongoing programmes, he proposed introduction of a new scheme “Ama Ghare LED Light” Karyakram in which each poor household will be provided with four LED lamps free of cost. He proposed an allocation of Rs 125 crore for the new scheme.

The finance minister also made provision of an all-time high outlay of Rs 400 crore for development of Railway Projects in the state. “This amount will be provided towards state contribution for Khurda-Bolangir, Nabarangpur-Jeypore and Jeypore-Malkangiri new rail line projects,” Behera said.

He said the government has also decided to infuse 26 per cent equity in commercially viable railway projects in the state for faster completion of projects of strategic importance through SPVs.

Hailing the budget as “pro-people, pro-poor and balanced with strong focus on development,” chief minister Naveen Patnaik said it will foster equitable and inclusive growth. I hope the budget will fulfill aspiration of people”.