Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh, who is also in charge of finance today presented the annual budget for the year 2015-16 which will have a deficit of rupees 126.42 crore. Total receipt estimated is rupees 9602 crores while the total estimated expenditure is rupees 9728.61.
While presenting the annual budget, the Chief Minister said that several funds at which the state government use to receive from the central government under normal Central Assistance, Special Central Assistance and Special Central Assistance will no longer be available as the Union Budget 2015-16 has made no provision for these fund on the ground that these assistance have been subsumed in the 14th Finance Commission award.
“We have largely relied on the funding under SCA & SPA to fill up critical gaps in our infrastructure…. This is going to drastically affect the position of the state finance position”, OkramIbobi said.
Another critical area that the state government is going to face is the center’s proposals to run the centrally sponsored scheme (CSS) with changed sharing pattern keeping in view the larger devolution of tax resources to the state. There are 24 CSS presently undertaking in the state. With this various other flagship programme like the Rastriya Madhyamic Siksha Abhiyan (RMSA), National Health Mission (NHM), Integrated Chied Development Scheme (ICDS) and Accelerated Irrigation Benefit programme (AIBP), which already pre-empts huge amount of state’s resources towards state’s share requirements of these schemes even at 90:10 ratio may landed in trouble. The center state share is likely to be 70:30 for implementation of these flagships programme. And moreover the state government has to bear 50% of the RKVY scheme which is being implemented 100% grant from the centre.
As according to the Budget estimate 2015-16 presented by the Chief Minister on the first day of the monsoon session of the 10th Manipur Legislative Assembly begin today, the total receipt is estimated at rupees 9602.19 crores. The revenue receipts are estimated at rupess 8657.85 crores and capital receipt at rupees 944.34 crores.
