Budgetary support may increase by upto 20% for 2002-03

Centre may allocate up to Rs 1,200 billion as budgetary support for the first year of the Tenth Five Year Plan, an increase of about 20 per cent over the current financial year.

Following a meeting between Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha and Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission K C Pant, the consensus appears to be on a gross budgetary support ranging between Rs 1,100 billion to Rs 1,200 billion, even though Plan Panel had initially sought Rs 1,300 billion keeping in view eight per cent annual growth envisaged in the 10th Plan.

Last year the gross budgetary support stood at Rs 986 billion.

Sinha declined to divulge the details of the meeting on the budgetary support, saying it was part of the Budget process for the year 2002-03, while Pant was not available for comments.

Both Sinha and Pant agreed that additional central assistance need to be allocated to states against benchmarking for achieving certain pre-defined milestones of economic development in areas such as power, urban development, agriculture and public distribution, sources said.

N K Singh, member, Planning Commission, has recommended benchmarking in terms of incentives to be given to the states as additional funds for achieving the milestones and disincentives for non-performance.

There was a broad consensus between both on the development of the above-mentioned areas, sources said, adding that Pant expressed concern over the widening gap between the developed and developing states and cautioned about the misuse of the benchmarking criteria for the additional fund.

PTI