MHA asks senior officers to give realistic revised Budget estimates

The letter, dated September 4, advised these officers to remember some of the key points while firming up proposals to avoid such a scenario. “They should prioritise activities/schemes, identify such activity/scheme which can be eliminated/reduced in size/merged with any other scheme/activity and also historical data regarding target achievements (both physical and financial) and bottlenecks, if any, should be taken into account,” Muthukumar wrote.

Muthukumar also advised that thorough assessment of ground realities should be undertaken at field level to arrive at accurate projections in all cases. “In case of new/recent projects/schemes, the anticipated time to obtain final approval of the Competent Authority, expected time lag for implementation, institutional capacity to implement as per schedule, constraints on incurring expenditure by the agencies, should be duly factored in,” he added.

Last week, the Finance Ministry had sent a letter to financial advisers of all ministries and departments and asked them to ensure accurate projection of estimates and complete data capture in the Estimated Committed Liabilities (ECL) module in Union Budget Information System (UBIS) for projecting allocations.