Limited deficit vote-on-account placed in Bengal Assmbly

Kolkata, Mar 09 (UNI) A ''limited deficit'' Vote-on-Account budget for the first four months of the next financial year (2006-07) was presented in the West Bengal Assembly today by state Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta.

With the state Assembly elections barely a month away, the state government, instead of a full fledged budget proposal for the whole of next year, could only present the estimates of the first four months of the next fiscal without any new tax proposal or the announcement for any major project under any sector.

However, the Finance Minister, while enhancing the state's total plan outlay by about 19 per cent for the next financial year to Rs 8,024 crore from Rs 6,877 crore allocated for the current fiscal, had also increased the fund for expenditure for almost every government department substantially in the midst of severe criticism from the Opposition.

Among the departments benefitting from the increased outlay are Transport, Education, Health, Power, Rural Development, Panchayats, Public Works and Information Terchnology from about five per cent to over 16 per cent.

As the total deficit in the next year's vote-on-account had been reduced to only Rs two crore, the Finance Minister had made provision for increasing the number of employment opportunities to at least 2.52 lakh till July this year compared to about 520,000 jobs created during the current fiscal so far.

Highliting the basic features of his budget proposals, Dr Dasgupta later claimed that through strict fiscal discipline the percentage of state domestic products had been increased to 8.07 per cent in West Bengal during the current fiscal with the possibility of its further growth in the coming months against the national average of only 6.7 per cent.

Referring to healthy growth in Services sector (9.8 per cent), Agriculture and its allied sectors (5.7 per cent) and Industrial sector (4.8 per cent) in the state this year, he expressed that the trend would continue in the next financial year also generating the same positive impact in Bengal's economy.

He said while there was a provision of about 19 per cent growth in the state's planned expenditure in 2006-07, in terms of non-plan expenditure during the same period the increase was only about one per cent from Rs 40,338 crore to Rs 41,917 crore.

Eds: Pls pick up suitably from earlier series.

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