SHILLONG, March 1 - Meghalaya has decided to merge Plan and Non-Plan expenditures, after the NDA Government abolished the Planning Commission and the Five-Year Plan and therefore relevance of these classifications was lost.
The merger would reflect in the 2017-18 Budget to be presented in the Assembly, sometime at the end of this month, by Chief Minister Mukul Sangma, who also holds the Finance portfolio.
�We have approved the proposal to merge Plan and Non- Plan expenditure in the State budget,� Sangma said after chairing a marathon five-hour meeting on Tuesday night.
The concept of Plan and Non-Plan expenditures began with the first Five Year Plan (1951) after the Planning Commission was established. The 12th and the last Five Year Plan would end on March 31, 2017.
The Plan and Non-Plan expenditures were important heads with respect to the Five Year Plan as the Planning Commission decided the estimates of allocations.
Under the Five Year Plan, the Plan expenditure included capital, revenue and recurring spending on programmes and schemes. On the other hand, Non-Plan expenditure included spending on salaries, interest payment, subsidies, maintenance of assets and infrastructure and others.
However, since the Plan expenditures were largely viewed as developmental and Non-Plan as non-developmental expenditures, there was a visible neglect of Non- Plan expenditures. For instance, focus was put on building schools, but salaries of the teachers in these schools were not paid. This led to difficulty in linking outlay to outcome.
One of the objectives of doing away with the Five Year Plan is �decentralising planning� and give the States more freedom to decide how best to spend the available resources.
Sangma, meanwhile, said, the State Planning and Finance departments are working to formulate the structure of the merger of the old accounting process.
Apart from Meghalaya, Maharashtra and Odisha Governments have also decided to merge Plan and Non-Plan expenditures during this year�s Budget presentation.
