E-Paper
Haryana capex went down by ₹7,600 crore in 2022-23
Capital expenditure or capex is money spent by the government on creation of long-term assets like roads, healthcare facilities, bridges, infrastructure projects and for development works. Haryana’s capital expenditure went down by about ₹7,697 crore in the current financial year
Haryana’s capital expenditure declined by about ₹7,697 crore in the current financial year (2022-23) even as chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar proposed a more than 17% increase in expenditure for capital asset creation while presenting the 2023-24 budget estimates.
Capital expenditure or capex is money spent by the government on creation of long-term assets like roads, educational institutions, healthcare facilities, bridges, infrastructure projects and for development works. Capex helps boost and sustain economic growth.
Revenue receipts fell by about 8%
Khattar, who holds the finance portfolio, had allocated a sum of ₹61,057 crore for capital expenditure in 2022-23 budget estimates last year. This included ₹35,052 crore for the repayment of public debts.
The CM in 2022-23 estimates had in fact increased the proportion of capital expenditure from 25% to 34.4% as compared to 2021-22 estimates. The CM was eyeing a 15% increase in revenue receipts in 2022-23 budget estimates. On the contrary, the receipts declined by about 8% in the revised estimates.
Rural, urban development spent less in 2022-23
As per the budget documents, the decrease in capital expenditure has largely been due to lesser spendings by the rural development and panchayats department, urban development and town and country planning departments, irrigation and water resources departments, power and public health engineering departments. The rural development and panchayats department was allocated about ₹2,602 crore in 2022-23 but it could spend only about ₹831 crore. Similarly, urban development and town and country planning departments were allocated about ₹4,570 crore of which it spent ₹997 crore. The irrigation and water resources departments spent ₹2,430 crore as compared to the allocated sum of ₹3,448 crore, power department drew about ₹13 crore only as against ₹777 crore allocation and public health engineering department spend ₹1,816 crore as against the allocated amount of ₹2,299 crore, budget documents showed.
The new optimistic outlay
Proposing a budget outlay of ₹1,83,950 crore for 2023-24, the CM announced an expenditure of ₹57,879 crore (including a sum of ₹35,220 crore on repayment of public debts) on capital asset creation representing 31.5% of the budget. The CM said that the state government has maintained a focus on increasing capital expenditure. The Reserve Bank of India has stated that Haryana was one of the three states which had a positive deviation of actuals as compared to budgetary targets in capital outlays, whereas the average across the country was minus 21.3%.
State-owned PSUs to pitch in
State public sector enterprises like the Haryana Shehri Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP), as per Khattar’s budget speech is estimated to make capital investments of ₹7,500 crore in 2023-24. The CM had proposed that state-owned public sector enterprises which were in profit in 2022-23 will transfer 25% of their profits to the state government to enable it to meet its development goals. Officials said any surplus amount with the state public sector undertakings will be deposited with Haryana State Financial Services Ltd which will offer a better rate of interest to the state PSUs than scheduled banks and loan out the amount to the government at a much lesser rate of interest than the market.
