By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: Mohan Charan Majhi became the first BJP Chief Minister and Finance Minister to present an annual Budget in Odisha Assembly after the State formed in 1936 on linguistic basis. Even though BJP was in power with a Coalition Government led by Ex CM Naveen Patnaik from 2000 to 2009, the Saffron Party leaders had not get Finance Portfolios during the 9 years of Coalition rule with BJD.
Now with an absolute majority in the august House, on Thursday, the people’s CM Majhi scripted history and presented the annual budget for the financial year 2024-25 with a total outlay of Rs 2.65 Lakh crore, with focus on agriculture, health, education and infrastructure.
CM Majhi announced that ‘ Our government has decided to implement the Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) in convergence with the State’s own Health Assurance Scheme Gopabandhu Jana Arogya Yojana to provide cashless healthcare in Government and private health facilities to all eligible families,”.
CM Majhi said, under AB PMJAY, we will be able to avail funds from the central government in the ratio of 60:40 reducing burden on the state budget. An outlay of Rs500 crore has been proposed for the ABPM-JAY and Rs 3,056 crore for the state sector scheme in the budget.
Programme Expenditure is Rs 1.55 lakh crore, administrative expenditure is proposed at Rs 97,725 crore, an outlay of Rs 3,900 crore for Disaster Risk Management Funds while Transfers from State will have an outlay of Rs.8,375 crore.
Chief Minister Majhi said agriculture and allied sector employs 45.80% of the total workforce and contributes 22.5% to the Gross State Value Added (GSVA) for the State. “I propose to increase the allocation under agriculture and allied sectors by more than 36% from Rs.24,829 crore in 2023-24 to Rs.33,919 crore in 2024-25,” he said.
The total budget outlay is proposed to be financed mainly through revenue receipts of Rs.2,11,000 crore and borrowing and other receipts of Rs 54,000 crore. The fiscal deficit is estimated to be 3.5 per cent of GSDP for the year 2024-25, CM Majhi said.
CM Majhi said the total revenue receipts for the year 2024-25 include State’s Own tax for Rs.60,000 crore, Own Non-tax revenue of Rs.58,000 crore, State’s share in Central taxes for Rs.55,232 crore and grants from Centre for Rs.37,768 crore.
CM proposed to give a three-fold increase in total allocation for Women & Child Development Department and Mission Shakti Department together from Rs.6,224 crore in 2023-24 to Rs.17,942 crore in 2024-25.
A total sum of Rs 21,200 crore has been proposed for public healthcare, which is an increase of about 32 percent over previous financial year 2023-24. It amounts to 8% of the State Budget, which matches with the normative allocation for the sector as per recommendation of 15th Finance Commission.
