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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Schemes to fund Bengal by Jayanta Roy Chowdhury

Schemes to fund Bengal by Jayanta Roy Chowdhury

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published Published on Jun 14, 2011   modified Modified on Jun 14, 2011

The Centre is exploring the option of helping out Bengal by stepping up assistance for specific schemes, a route that allows room for manoeuvre within rules.

The Centre’s line of thought emerged on a day Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra was in Delhi to discuss ways to bail out the cash-starved state government.

Mitra, who had an hour- long meeting with his Union counterpart Pranab Mukherjee, remained tight-lipped on what they discussed. “My chief minister will come (to New Delhi) and finalise our plans…. My meeting with Pranabbabu was positive.”

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee is expected to visit the capital later this month and meet both Mukherjee and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Officials in Delhi said Bengal, which had started the year with little in its corpus, could expect a jump of up to a third in its annual plan size. Last year, Bengal had negotiated a nearly Rs 18,000-crore annual plan.

Several central ministries are already holding preparatory meetings on schemes for Bengal for the current year.

“We have scrapped all our earlier calculations for Bengal… it’s being treated as a special case. More money needs to be allocated to back up the new accord to bring peace to north Bengal and to provide funds for the Naxalite-hit tribal districts besides the specific schemes sought by the new government,” said an official.

The Union government normally cannot give any state more money than allowed by formulae designed to divide central resources. But special circumstances allow it to fund specific schemes under a mechanism called “additional central assistance”, which is given over and above normal central assistance for a state’s plan.

“Bengal’s plan has tended to be low over the years mainly because it has always been unable to spend money given in previous years compared with other large states. If it can give us good urgent schemes, money will be there,” said a plan panel adviser.

The Maoist menace, underdeveloped hill districts, work to rebuild infrastructure devastated by cyclone Aila and the need for facilities to rehabilitate almost one lakh people after India exchanges border enclaves with Bangladesh seem good reasons for the state to demand more funds.

Officials said Bengal’s finance minister could also renegotiate interest payouts on the state’s huge debt burden. “That’s one way of lowering monthly expenditure and I am sure Mitrababu will be taking that up,” an official said.

Mitra also met Asian Development Bank officials this morning. The bank is funding a $200-million urban development project and Bengal is expected to come up with a similar plan to develop Calcutta, Darjeeling and other places. The multilateral agency has already approved a $210-million soft loan for a 271km expressway connecting north and south Bengal.

Officials said the state was expected to hold discussions with the World Bank, which will sign a Rs 7,000-crore Ganga river cleaning plan with the Indian government tomorrow. A large chunk of that money will be spent in Bengal where the river breaks into distributaries to empty into the sea.

State finance figures

In his address to the Bengal Assembly today, governor M.K. Narayanan painted a grim picture of the state economy.

“The state is likely to face a cash deficit of… Rs 9,000 crore during the current financial year-2011-12,” the governor said.

Narayanan also expressed concern over the “massive debt burden” the new government has inherited. “The debt burden had already reached Rs 185,660.47 crore on March 31 and is estimated to go up to a staggering Rs 203,488 crore during the course of this year,” he said.

Narayanan added: “The state was burdened with a huge amount of unpaid bills. Added to this was a severe under-provisioning in the budget (placed in the House on March 22, 2011). This under-provisioning included vital areas such as social infrastructure and human development and the shortfall in this regard could be as high as Rs 3,000 crore.”

The Telegraph, 14 June, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110614/jsp/frontpage/story_14110784.jsp


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