Day 5: VIth State Legislative Assembly

NAHARLAGUN, Mar 10:  Deputy Chief Minister and Minister in-charge Finance Chowna Mein today presented the budget estimates for the year 2017-18 on the floor of the house projecting a revenue receipt of Rs 14599 crores and a capital receipt of Rs 1436.75 crores, making the total receipts of Rs 16035 crores with an increase of over 15% from the budget estimates of 2016-17. 

In his budget speech, the Finance Minister informed that the philosophy of this year’s budget 
draws upon 15 broad themes—Enhance transparency through governance reforms, empower the youth and squarely address the twin challenge of deficit in skills and jobs, transformation of rural farm economy, unlock the latent potential of land, introducing policy measures which stimulates entrepreneurship, public investments to have a balanced regional spread, overhaul the educational system in the state and create an effective and affordable health services delivery model.

It also proposed to create a social security net for the elderly, widows and the disabled, take measures for women empowerment, bridge the infrastructure deficit, revitalize the hydro power sector and tourism, augment the internal resource generation capacity, effective Law and Order management and follow a sustainable growth path in harmony with environment.

Informing that this year’s budget preparation exercise was as participatory and inclusive as possible through series of pre-budget consultations, reaching out to all stakeholders for suggestions, besides consultations in social media and civil society organizations by the chief minister himself, Mein said that in the backdrop of tumultuous political changes, the government has to bear a liability burden of over Rs 4000 crores posing a tightrope walk for the government to strike a balance between the imperative of expanding public investments and defraying past liabilities while maintaining commitment on maintaining a reasonable fiscal deficit.
In an effort to make the government effective, transparent, responsive and accountable to the people, various measures have been introduced for governance reform. These included harmonizing the functioning of the Planning and Finance department into an integrated Department of Finance and Investments headed by the Development Commissioner, with three different wings: Investment and Planning division, Budget 
division and Economic Affairs division. 

Government decided to use technology as a major tool of governance, for improving internal efficiency of government as well as the quality of interface with citizens for which Rs 15 crores is kept in the budget under the scheme Digital Arunachal. The trinity of JAM—Jandhan, Aadhar and Mobile will be used for delivery of citizen services and moving towards a cashless and paperless economy, he said while informing that over 13 lakh bank accounts opened in state of which nearly 2.2 lakh are Prime Minister Jan dhan Yojana accounts.

Nearly 1.4 lakh bank accounts are seeded with Aadhar and the government will be stepping up efforts to enhance and universalize Aadhar coverage over the next six months and a provision of Rs 5 crore is being provided for this purpose. E-Office will be made fully functional within this financial year for all departments in the Secretariat and steps will be initiated for ushering in the E office platform in the districts and the Directorates, a portal for online registration for examinations, computerized human resource management system will be introduced for all government employees, Chief Ministers dashboard will be created on an electronic platform which will track progress of key projects, besides stipends of students, scholarships, old age pensions, salaries of teachers of SSA, RUSA and RMSA will be paid on a direct benefit transfer mode directly into their bank accounts and all major citizen services will be provided online to reduce human interface. 

Mein said that Deputy Commissioners being the eyes and ears of the government at the grassroots level for decentralized service delivery would be designated as Deputy Excise and Taxation Commissioners to discharge the powers of Excise and Taxation commissioners within their jurisdiction in order to check leakage of revenue. To make the administration of public distribution system smoothly, decision has been taken to implement the Direct cash benefit transfer scheme in select urban areas of Itanagar, Naharlagun, Doimukh, Pasighat, Tezu, Namsai, Roing, Khonsa, selected areas of Bomdila, covering 1.89 lakh priority households, adding Arunachal Pradesh will be amongst the first states in the country to implement the DBT scheme in food subsidy and the first to do so in the entire north east. 

For skill development an initial sum of Rs. 5 crores has been allocated, the Finance Minister said, while disclosing that government plans to train 9000 youth in the coming financial year under Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana with minimum 70% employment guarantee and an outlay of Rs 24 crores, while four ITIs will be made operational next year at Sagalee, Ziro, Kanubari and Pangin. One model ITI will be established at Yupia with an outlay of Rs 2.5 crores.

To promote organic agriculture movement in state, 2 crores proposed under CMs mission organic for production of organic inputs in government farms to supplement CSS of Mission Organic value Chain Development program, he said, adding that government administering CMs Swalamban Yojana to encourage local entrepreneurship in tourism development, value addition in agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry and fisheries programme, traditional textile weaving and manufacturing for which an allocation of Rs 150 crores has been kept and hoped that at least 1500 youth will become entrepreneurs and at least 7500 youth will gain direct employment and another 15000 people will secure indirect employment. 

Government is making the MoU with National Dairy Development Board of Anand in Gujarat operational for organizing the dairy farmers in clusters on the AMUL model which will help create a value chain from milk and an initial outlay of Rs 5 crores is being proposed for the Chief Minister’s white revolution program to establish an integrated dairy development project in Lohit district, besides other schemes. 

Under the Integrated Cooperative development project, various infrastructure works have been taken up at a cost of Rs 3.82 crores to cover nearly 4000 beneficiaries, he said, adding further that Rs 3 crore allocated for installing 37 ATM machines with cash dispensing facility along with customer service point and VSAT connectivity by APEX bank, besides distributing 10,000 kisan credit cards next year and RuPAY cards to 40,000 Jandhan account holders for which another 3 crores has been allocated. 

Giving a details of allocations covering all sectors “education, health, rural transformation, road 
connectivity, social security, infrastructure, agri-horti and allied sectors, urban development, 
tourism & culture, law and order, forest & environment, balanced regional development, industry and private investments, unlocking the potential of land for over all development of the state, Mein said that in order to motivate the government servants to perform well, the budget proposed to introduce a Chief Minister’s Employee Housing Scheme under which employees can avail bank loan of up to Rs. 30 lakhs and will get an interest subsidy of 4% from the government. This will entail a net interest rate of 4.5% and a doubling of housing loan entitlement for which Rs. 5 crores has been proposed, he informed while disclosing that monthly wages of contingency workers has been proposed to enhance by Rs 1000 per month.

Later the Speaker adjourned the house to meet again on March 14 next to take up various list of business, besides budget discussion and passing.
 

BJP Arunachal hails budget as ‘historic’

ITANAGAR,Mar 10:  Hailing the state budget presented on Friday, State BJP termed it as the most forward looking budget ever presented in the hallowed halls of the Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly. The ruling party congratulated the Chief Minister Pema Khandu, Deputy Chief Minister and Finance Minister Chowna Mein and hosts of officials including Chief Secretary, Principal Secretary and Finance Commissioner.

‘It is a historic budget that has taken care of the present and future needs of the cross section of society. Be it farmers or students or for that matter, rural and urban settlers and even for the government employees, this budget has ensured social safety for all,’ said a beaming state BJP President Tapir Gao while adding that futuristic digitization in governance and  farming  for  preservation and promotion  of age-old art and culture has been optimally addressed.

Asserting that this budget has unveiled the biggest asset of the sparsely populated state, Gao said, ‘Our huge land banks that poor and rich own  in abundance never had any real commercial value but change in land lease policy as announced means that everyone would have access to capital from banks.’  Further, he added that “access to capital by cross section of society” as the “game-changer” that would lead to entrepreneurial enterprises which in turn would address the mounting unemployment challenge.

Gao hailed the budget for unprecedented focus given to horti –agriculture sectors that would make Arunachal Pradesh as “Fruit Bowl of India” sooner than later.  ‘It is long overdue which the successive governments had ignored but the present ruling BJP government would play by the state’s natural strengths,’ he said while adding that we must play with multi-pronged approaches and should not limit ourselves to just tourism or hydropower. ‘There’s a limit to impact lives and livelihoods in these two sectors but agriculture and horticulture is all relevant across the length and breadth of the frontier state,’ he added.

He also complimented the state government for seamless integration with the Modi led government’s agendas on infrastructural growth plan and for living up to PM Modi’s philosophy of “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas”.

 

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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