Deteriorating performance earns ShippingMin 50 cut in allocation

Even though we have sanctioned about 70 per cent of the funds under various schemes,the utilisation is not that much, say shipping officials. One of the reasons for this is that once the funds are sanctioned,the utilisation has to take place by the ports and then utilisation certificates are processed which leads to a time lag. A major fall out of this would be that almost 30 per cent of the Rs 1,755 crore would remain unspent in 2009-2010 as the finance ministry does not allow ministries to spend more than 33 per cent of their allocations in the last quarter.

In 2009-2010,the government had reallocated funds to the tune of Rs 385 crore marked for the Sethusamudram project to the Andaman Lakshadweep Harbour Works ALHW scheme. Against a demand of Rs 151 crore for the Sethusamudram project demanded for 2010-2011,the ministry appears to have managed to get only Rs 70 crore from the finance ministry.