Social, Infrastructure Development Fund to continue: CCEA

New Delhi, Mar 27 (UNI) The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs today gave its approval for continuation of a dedicated Fund, the 'Social and Infrastructure Development Fund,' beyond 2007-08 for funding the initiatives taken by the Government.

The initiatives include upgradation of 1,396 ITIs, training of farmers, employment for physically challenged, means-cum-merit scholarships and ground water recharge.

Another initiative was to provide social security through provision of death and disability insurance cover through LIC to rural landless households.

There is also a programme to support various institutes of historical, cultural, economic and agricultural significance for improving infrastructure.

The fund will be augmented as per requirement of the government.

In the current year (2007-08), an amount of Rs 6,000 crore will be transferred to the 'Social and Infrastructure Development Fund'.

As most of the schemes/programmes envisaged are capital in nature (funds being provided in the form of loans to create a corpus and earnings thereon deployed for funding the initiatives without depleting the corpus), the amount will be continued to be transferred to the Fund from the Capital section of the Consolidated Fund.

However, owing to the nature of social sector expenditure, utilisation of the Fund for incurring revenue expenditure will also be permitted in deserving cases.

UNI SN VD HS1452