Guwahati, The Comptroller and Auditor General has termed the Assam government budgetary assumptions for 2023-24 “unrealistic and overestimated,” pointing out that in several cases supplementary grants were approved where expenditure of the original allotted funds was not even done.
CAG terms Assam budget 2023-24 ‘unrealistic’; questions excessive supplementary grants
It also highlighted non-submission of Utilisation Certificates and annual accounts of several autonomous councils and other bodies.
The CAG report on state finances for 2023-24, laid in the Assembly on Saturday, said the budgetary assumptions of the state government “continued to be unrealistic and overestimated” during the fiscal year, as it incurred an expenditure of ₹1,39,449.66 crore against grants and appropriations of ₹1,69,966.13 crore, resulting in overall savings of ₹30,516.47 crore.
These savings stood at 17.95 per cent of total grants and appropriations made for the year.
The report said that “the savings were notional, as the funds were not actually available for expenditure”, since the actual receipts were ₹1,38,830.79 crore against the estimated ₹1,65,215.70 crore.
Out of the total savings, only 0.35 per cent was surrendered, which deprived the other departments from utilising the amount, indicating “poor” financial management.
In its recommendations, the CAG said the state government “may formulate a realistic budget based on reliable assumptions of likely resource mobilisation, the assessed needs of the departments and their capacity to utilise the allocated resources so as to avoid inflated budgeting without corresponding to the available resources”.
It also said that the Finance department “may review the departments having persistent savings for realistic budget allocation and monitoring of expenditure”.
The report further pointed out that supplementary grants of a total of ₹30,210.86 crore were approved by the legislature for 2023-24, whereas audit analysis of utilisation of these grants showed that only 74.19 per cent of it was required.
“Seeking supplementary grants without a requirement is indicative of poor budgetary management by the state government. Further, it is also clear that there is an absence of allocative efficiency and utilisation efficiency by departments, which led to excess expenditure in some grants and savings in others”, it noted.
The CAG report further said that 6,335 UCs aggregating to ₹18,669.55 crore during the period 2005-06 to 2022-23 have not been submitted.
In the absence of the UCs, it could not be ascertained whether the funds were utilised for the purposes for which those were given.
Till March 31, 2024, there were 485 annual accounts of 75 autonomous councils, development councils and government bodies, and 245 annual accounts of 39 PSUs pending for submission to the CAG for audit.
It impacted effective budgetary management and diluted accountability of these bodies, the CAG report added.
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