Kerala: Early boost for plan projects

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Finance Department is attempting to achieve what has always been considered impossible: issuing administrative sanction for all 2017-18 plan projects before the end of May. Usually, this happens only by the end of September. The target is, 70-75 per cent utilisation of plan funds by the end of December 2017. What normally happens is, 75-80 per cent of the money is spent during March, the last month of the fiscal.

“Such bunching of expenditures towards the end of the fiscal affects the quality of spending,” a top finance department official said. “Early sanction will do away with the chaotic spending departments resort to towards the end of the fiscal. The end result, which shows 80-85 per cent utilisation, might look good on paper but would be bad for the state,” the official added. Departments have been told that not more than 30 per cent of the plan funds should be spent during the last quarter (between January and March).

The department has already accelerated the decision-making process. The full budget will be passed only by May 18 but sanction has already been issued for projects worth Rs 1500 crore-plus; these are projects included in the 'green book', a documents that lists projects that are to be taken up on an urgent basis. The Panchayat Plan Formulation Guidelines, which is traditionally brought out during June, was released on April 2.  “The local bodies now have the time to devise projects and get it approved by the District Planning Committee, which is a laborious time-consuming process,” the official said.

When guidelines are put out late, local bodies struggle to get the necessary approvals even by November; local bodies have always been the worst performers. The annual increase in plan size was also affecting implementation. “Finance ministers keep inflating the size even though it is evident that the target would be impossible to achieve. It has become a political necessity,” the official said. Like in previous fiscals, political compulsions have made the LDF government to approve a higher plan outlay for 2017-18. From '24,000 crore in 2016-17, it has been raised to '26,500 crore for 2017-18, a 10.4 percent increase.