Chandigarh: Committed expenditure, including
salary, pension, servicing of debt continue to account for
Punjab's majority of resources as the proportion of such
spending is projected at 73.04 per cent of the revenue
receipts of 2010-11.
The rise in payments of the committed expenditure would
leave less resources with the state for spending on
development expenditure, experts pointed out.
"The state's revenue deficit is evidently high, primarily
on account of high expenditure on salaries, pension and
servicing of debt," the state's Finance Minister Manpreet
Singh Badal said in his budget speech today.
According to the fiscal indicators released in the state
budget here today, the proportion of committed expenditure of
revenue receipts (lotteries net) was estimated at 73.04 per
cent for 2010-11. However, share of salary, pensions and
interest payments of revenue receipts have come down a little
from 85.02 per cent in 2007-08 to 81.93 per cent in 2009-10.
Painting a grim picture of the state's finances, the
fiscal indicators revealed that the total committed
expenditure including salary, pension and interest payments of
the state would surge by 27 per cent to Rs 18,678.28 crore in
2010-11 against Rs 14,650.23 crore in 2008-09.
With the implementation of sixth pay commission's
recommendation, the state had projected annual liability of
Rs 3,000 crore as payment of additional salaries, pension
and Rs 4,800 crore as payment of arrears.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, March 16, 2010, 20:09