The State government has initiated the exercise to secure adequate funds from the XV Finance Commission to meet the requirements.
Chief Secretary S.P. Singh convened a meeting of senior officials of different departments on Monday and instructed them to prepare reports that would ensure release of maximum funds from the finance panel. With the members of the finance commission commencing their visits to different States in April, the departments were asked to prepare reports on the status of implementation of different schemes, the proposed targets and related issues by February 7 so that they could be effectively presented as and when required.
With the finance panel expected to make “performance-based” allocations based on the achievements in some schemes, officials concerned should take adequate care to ensure that special reports incorporating the strides made by the State in these specific areas are prepared.
In addition, enough care should be taken to see that information pertaining to grants to local bodies, district-wise development reports, income-expenditure related issues and tax collection are incorporated in their reports. The Finance Department had constituted a special team headed by a nodal officer to examine the reports submitted by individual departments in this direction. “The State can take advantage of its lead in issues like digitisation and measures for population control for securing sufficient grants from the finance commission,” a senior official said.
The State, however, had to factor in some disparities while preparing the reports of the departments concerned.
“Three districts Hyderabad, Medak and Rangareddy are ahead of the national average in several parameters, including tax collections. But the same is not the situation in the remaining seven districts,” the official told The Hindu .
