FM tells States to use additional resources with care

New Delhi, May 29 (UNI) Finance Minister P Chidambaram today enjoined upon the States to maintain the level of expenditure on agriculture and said additional resources from the Centre or its own need to be spent wisely -- ''without wastage and corruption.'' Speaking at the NDC meeting here, Mr Chidambaram called for developing State's specific plans for agriculture, which should be an aggregate of district-specific plans.

''The additional resources of the Central government or the State governments should be spent wisely -- without wastage and without corruption -- and focus on irrigation, seeds, salt testing, better delivery of fertiliser subsidy, modern markets and, last but not the least, agricultural research and extension,'' Mr Chidambaram said.

The Finance Minister said the Central government has been devolving an increasing amount of funds to the State governments and Union Territories by way of revenue sharing, grants and loans.

Referring to the proposed Mission on Food Security, Mr Chidambaram noted that there will be a demand for more funds.

''Large outlays are normally routed to the Finance Commission or the Planning Commission and an overall resource availability is taken into account. Unusual situations demand unusual answers.

Hence, I would support the proposal to provide additional resources and transfer the same through the method of Additional Central Assistance (ACA). In my view, the horizontal allocation across States should be based on a transparent formula: the size of agricultural GDP of the State and the prevalent yield gap being its parameters,'' Mr Chidambaram said.

UNI