In order to mobilize the necessary funds for Prime Minister Mamata Banerjee’s dream project, to give credit cards to students and to carry out restoration and reconstruction work after Cyclone Yaas, the state treasury has asked all departments to return unused funds to various accounts.
On June 7th, State Finance Minister Manoj Pant wrote to all departments to hand over all unused funds from the previous fiscal year by June 15th. These funds are, according to the letter, in the bank accounts of the departments or are local funds or general ledger accounts.
According to senior officials from the state finance ministry, the government is currently facing a financial shortage and needs funds to deal with the current situation. In the post-yaas situation, the state needs a lot of money for restoration and reconstruction work. Funds are also needed for some programs that the government will announce shortly.
“The first estimate shows that Yaas caused more than Rs 15,000 crore in damage and the center only paid Rs 400 crore. The deadline announced by Prime Minister Mamata Banerjee. In the current situation, it is impossible for the government to raise the money , and is therefore trying to negotiate the financial deficit through unused funds, “said a senior Treasury official.
The state government also needs money for the “student credit card”.
A high-ranking official said that since the state government will introduce the prime minister’s promised student credit card system from July, it will also require enormous funds. Those untapped funds can go a long way, he said.
He added that a meeting was held this week to implement the program, where students are punctually paid up to Rs 10 lakh for higher studies at a rate of 4 percent.
According to the Treasury Department official, other departments often use some technique to increase their own cash reserve. There are many cases where projects are not completed within the prescribed time, but the unused money is not returned to the government but instead is parked in the PL or local fund accounts.
It is a technique of the departments to transfer the funds to different companies in the departments or to store them as fixed deposits with the banks so that they can use them at a later date as needed, the official said. He pointed out that the Principal Accountant General (PAG) wrote to the Finance Secretariat on April 26th to submit the final reconciliation statement by June 30th as many departments had failed to provide proper where-used records.
PAG Deepak Narain announced that a large number of use certificates for the granting of aid are pending. His letter stated that the state government should submit usage certificates for Rs 23,43,75,78 crore from 2017-18 to 2019-20. His letter states that the inspection of 71 treasuries in 2019-20 revealed that funds were being transferred to personal deposit accounts in 15 treasuries. For example, state officials are expecting a refund of several hundred crores that have not been used properly by various departments but have been parked as FD or on PL accounts.
The only good news for the Treasury, however, is that the Treasury Department released Rs.1467.24 billion in June as part of the budget deficit grant after decentralizing a total of Rs.9.871 billion to 17 states. In the past three months, West Bengal has received Rs 4,401.75 crore out of the total of Rs 29,613 crore awarded as grants under the recommendations of the 15th
–IANS
saibal / vd
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been revised by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
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