Repeated circulars on expenditure mgmt fail to reverse trend
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, July 17: Jammu and Kashmir Financial Code, which prescribes measures required to be taken by the departments of the State Government to promote fiscal discipline and ensure balanced pace of expenditure, is being flouted continuously by majority of the departments and despite being aware of this the Finance Department has failed to reverse the trend by taking stringent measures.
This can be gauged from the official figures pertaining to expenditure during first three quarters by the Government departments in comparison to the last quarter of two previous financial years.
According to J&K Financial Code, rush of expenditure in the closing month of a financial year should be avoided as far as possible. The Code explicitly states that during the last quarter of the financial year the expenditure should be limited to 33% of the budget allocation and in the month of March the expenditure should be limited to 15%.
In order to ensure strict compliance to the Financial Code and to promote fiscal discipline and proper expenditure management, the Finance Department has issued circular instructions to all the Government Departments a number of times till date. However, these instructions have fallen on deaf ears and figures of past two financial years are the testimony of the same.
The percentage of expenditure in the last quarter of 2014-15 financial year ranged between 13 to 97 of the total expenditure. An amount of Rs 18,282.08 crore exceeding Rs 10 crore in each case incurred out of the total expenditure of Rs 4,30,07.09 crore in the last quarter constituting 42.51% of the total expenditure.
Planning, Ladakh Affairs, Power Development, Education, Industries and Commerce, Public Works, Social Welfare, Housing and Urban Development and Tourism were among those departments which were found violating the Financial Code and circular instructions during 2014-15 financial year.
Instead of showing compliance to the Code and instructions during 2015-16 financial year, majority of the Government departments continued to violate the same and this is evident from the fact that the percentage of expenditure in the last quarter ranged between 29 and 97 of the total expenditure.
“An amount of Rs 23,234.40 crore was incurred out of the total expenditure of Rs 54,660.20 crore in the last quarter constituting 42.52% of the total expenditure”, an official document said while mentioning the Finance Department as one of the violators of the Financial Code and own circular instructions.
Planning Department made 59% expenditure in last quarter while as Ladakh Affairs Department made 97% expenditure. Similarly, Power Development Department made 52% expenditure in last quarter, Finance Department 40%, Industries and Commerce 52%, Agriculture 46%, Revenue Department 67%, Public Works Department 49%, Social Welfare Department 59%, Tourism 54% and Transport Department 64%.
These figures clearly establish that instructions on expenditure management issued from time to time have failed to reverse the prevailing trend, official sources said. They asked, “what is the fun of issuing such instructions if no steps are initiated to ensure their strict compliance”, adding “either the Government should stop issuing instructions or take some stringent action to ensure financial discipline”.
As per Section 82 of the Constitution of J&K, it is mandatory for the State Government to get the excess over a grant/appropriation regularized by the State Legislature. Although no time limit for regularization of expenditure has been prescribed under this Section, the regularization of excess expenditure is required to be done after the completion of discussion of the Appropriation Accounts by the Public Accounts Committee.
However, this has not been done during the past over three decades in J&K and excess expenditure aggregating to Rs 1,04,767.43 crore has not been regularized by the State Legislature till date. “In this way, not only the Government even the Legislature is violating the Constitution of the State”, sources remarked.
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