NEW DELHI: In a bid to boost infrastructure and job creation, the upcoming Budget may focus on road, ports, power, information technology and telecom.
According to multiple sources Express spoke to, railway and social sectors like health, education, and women & child development may not get any increment in budget allocation.
Also, how ministries utilised the funds allocated to them in previous years will be a major criterion for deciding budget allocation this time, informed sources told Express.
“The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is expected to get a good hike in budget allocation, which goes well with the decent progress made by the ministry. Power is another sector which may get a boost. The allocation to IT and telecom sector may go up,” said a senior finance ministry official.
The official added that sectors like railways will not get any substantial increase in the Budget.
“There are some ministries where structural and performance reforms are required. For railways, the government is trying to achieve target through disinvestment and other internal reforms. So, any increased allocation for railways is unlikely.”
While the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs may get some incentives for affordable housing schemes, Swachh Bharat and the Smart Cities projects are unlikely to get additional budgetary support, another official said.
The official noted that the government may disappoint on some social sectors, though there might be some announcements on health insurance and pension schemes.“Budget allocation for some social sectors may fall short of expectation like health, women & child development and education. The reason for lower allocation for some of the ministries is due to poor utilisation of fund. There are many projects where not even 30 per cent of the funds have been used,” the official added.
For instance, many projects like Nirbhaya Fund remained under-utilised. The total corpus under Nirbhaya Fund now stands at Rs 3,100 crore, which remains un-utilised.
Also, a huge corpus of funds allocated to Namami Gange Project is lying idle.Last month, the finance ministry rejected the defence ministry’s proposal to establish a fund through which unspent annual expenditure would be rolled over to the following year’s defence budget.
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