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The government on Thursday sought approval for fresh cash expenditure of over ₹4-lakh crore during current fiscal from Parliament. This is part around ₹6.28-lakh crore of gross additional expenditure presented as Second Supplementary Demands for Grants, which is all time high. Fresh expenses have already been included in the Revised Estimate for FY2020-21 as part of Union Budget. This means Revised Estimate of fiscal deficit of 9.5 per cent will not see any change.
Remaining over ₹2-lakh crore, as proposed in supplementary grants, will be met through savings.
According to supplementary grants, fresh cash allocation of ₹65,000 crore has been proposed for fertilisers. This includes subsidy for Indigenous P&K (₹ 9,722.53 crore), Imported P&K (₹5,719.37 crore), City Compost (₹43.98 crore), indigenous urea (₹36,112.80 crore) and import of urea (₹12,999.62 crore).
In the Budget for FY21, the government had provided ₹47,805 crore as subsidy for urea and ₹23,504 crore for nutrient-based subsidy. On November 12, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that as fertiliser consumption was going up significantly, ₹65,000 crore will be provided to ensure increased supply of fertilisers to farmers to enable timely availability of fertilisers in the upcoming crop season. Now, with supplementary grants, this money is being provided.
Meanwhile, supplementary grants have provided over ₹20,400 crore for defence sector, which is to be spent on aircraft acquisition, among others. Capital expenditure of ₹10,000 crore has been proposed for road sector. This includes investment of ₹6,500 crore in National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). Another capital expenditure include ₹20,466 crore. Health Ministry will get around ₹1,500 crore.
Helpful tool
Supplementary grants is a tool for additional funding and it helps the Centre correct the economy using limited resources where they are required most. For example, during current fiscal, 67 grants (read expenditure allocated for Central Ministries and Departments) out of 101 were lowered. This helped Centre restrict increase in the Revised Estimate of expenditure to over ₹4-lakh crore, which would have gone by over ₹6-lakh crore.
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