The outcome budget presented by Delhi Finance Minister Kailash Gahlot in the Assembly on Monday indicated that several schemes launched in last year’s budget are yet to take off.
The government in its last year’s budget, which it termed as “Rozgar Budget”, had promised 20 lakh jobs in five years. This translates to creating over 1,000 new jobs every day. But the Delhi government has not publicly announced how many jobs have been created since then.
For instance, the “Rozgar Bazaar 2.0”, which aimed to create 1 lakh jobs every year, remains a non-starter. The job portal was supposed to be one of the top employment generators.
The project was transferred from the Employment Department to the Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University (DSEU), which had floated a tender as well, but it did not materialise, according to an official source.
“Initially, ₹12 crore was allocated to the Employment Department and then the project was transferred to the DSEU. ₹3 crore was also issued to the university. The Employment Department is now planning to surrender the remaining ₹9 crore,” the source told The Hindu.
Food truck and shopping festival
Among the list of schemes announced in the previous budget were the Food Truck Policy and the Delhi Shopping Festival. The outcome budget shows that these schemes also remained non-starters.
While the shopping festival was proposed to be conducted between January 28 and February 26, 2023, the Food Truck Policy was scheduled to be announced in October 2022.
Despite several schemes failing to take off, the Directorate of Employment shows that 75% of the indicators are “on track”.
First introduced in 2017-18, the outcome budget is a report card of the government to assess how various departments have performed with the allocated funds under the previous budget. This report card specifies whether the money had been spent for the purpose it was allocated, what was the outcome of the fund usage, and what was the overall score of a department in terms of percentage on-track indicators as on December 31.
Out of the 17 departments that are a part of the report card, the Education Department showed that 67% of the indicators were on track. The Department of Health and Family Welfare, which was among the poor performers, showed only 54% indicators being on track.
Delivering the outcome budget, the Finance Minister said, “Against the target of 1,000 Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinics, 518 have become operational during the nine-month period ending December 31, 2022, treating a total of 1.5 crore patients.”
The other poor performers include the Urban Development and Housing Department, the Tourism Department and the Power Department, where 53%, 56% and 47% of the indicators were “on track”, respectively.
The top performers include the Department of Women and Child Development with 71%, Food, Supplies and Consumer Affairs with 80% and Environment and Forest departments with 73% indicators “on track”.
