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Interviews | TV Somanathan, Expenditure Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, interviewed by Vikas Dhoot (The Hindu)
TV Somanathan, Expenditure Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, interviewed by Vikas Dhoot (The Hindu)

TV Somanathan, Expenditure Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, interviewed by Vikas Dhoot (The Hindu)

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published Published on Feb 4, 2021   modified Modified on Feb 10, 2021

-The Hindu

Even with closures, capex exceeded plan, says Expenditure Secretary

Expenditure Secretary T.V. Somanathan said the government has been very careful and realistic in its expenditure and receipts projections for 2021-22, and that its push for capital expenditure is the largest ever over a two-year period. Excerpts:

* You have called it an expansionary budget, but overall spending is just about 33,000 crore in 2021-22 over this year’s revised estimates (RE). Also, what’s been the approach used for overall estimates?

Yes, but the RE is substantially higher than the Budget Estimate (BE), which is contrary to expectations of most analysts and economists. So spending expanded this year and the expansion has been sustained into next year. As recently as two weeks ago, a lot of analysts were saying it will be about rs. 30-31 lakh crore. It might have looked more expansionary if we spent 30 lakh crore this year and then spent 34 lakh crore… but actually, spending around 34 lakh crore in both years is more expansionary.

Incremental expenditure isn’t high, I agree, but the composition changes very substantially. This year’s spending had a big weight of welfare schemes and subsidies, and next year, many of those one-time expenditures disappear and get replaced by capital expenditure. The capital expenditure is 34.5% above 2020-21’s BE and 26.5% over the RE. With six months of closure and restrictions, capital expenditure has been difficult to sustain, yet the capex is above BE, which is a significant achievement. Most people didn’t expect us to reach anywhere near the capex budget. But we are likely to reach 4.39 lakh crore. And this year’s BE was 21% higher than previous year, so over a two-year period, this is the highest increase in capex ever.

Estimating for the central government of a democracy of such diversity and complexity of India is an art, not a science, so we can never get the estimates exactly right. We can’t predict every possible contingency that will arise during the year, nor can we very accurately predict what the revenue collections will be, nor can we even predict what the GDP will be. So the only thing that I will say with all sincerity is that this time, we have been extremely careful to try and estimate all receipts — not just revenue — and expenditure as realistically as we can, given the information and the knowledge that we have. We may go wrong, our knowledge may be less, or our information may be wrong. But there is no deliberate under- or over-estimation. If anything, there may be slight underestimation of revenue and slight over-estimation of expenditure on the conservative side, because we don’t want to show a rosier picture than reality. We want to be very careful, we know that we are in a difficult situation, we have just gone through a very difficult situation.

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Image Courtesy: The Hindu


The Hindu, 4 February, 2021, https://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/this-is-the-highest-capex-ever-over-a-2-year-period/article33753201.ece


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