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Sinha's fiscal management plan

BUDGET 2000

Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha has introduced a number of initiatives to curb built-in expenditure growth and bring about structural changes in the composition of expenditure for better fiscal management.

The zero-based budgeting scrutiny, started in last year's budget, would be completed in a time-bound manner. This exercise has been completed in eight departments, as a result of which 69 schemes are to be discontinued or merged with other schemes.

The manpower requirements of government departments will be reassessed by reviewing the norms for creation of posts.

Fresh recruitment in government departments and institutions will be limited to minimum essential needs. Moreover, the scheme for redeployment of surplus staff will be made more effective and will provide facilities for retraining. A VRS scheme will also be introduced for staff in the surplus pool.

Subsidies will be reviewed to bring in cost-based user charges wherever feasible, the finance minister said in his budget speech.

Sinha said no new autonomous institutions will be created without approval of the Cabinet. Budgetary support to autonomous institutions will be reviewed and they will be encouraged to maximise generation of internal resources.

The interest rate of General Provident Funds has also been reduced by 1 per cent to 11 percent from in order to align with the overall interest rate structure.

To reduce expenditure on account of debt service payments, a portion of the disinvestment proceeds will be earmarked for retiring government debt.

An initial provision of Rs 1,000 crore has been made in the budget for this purpose.

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