AIZAWL, Feb 19 - Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga, who also holds the Finance portfolio, today presented a Rs 10,715-crore budget for 2020-21, describing it as a surplus budget of Rs 17.73 crore. There was no proposal to introduce any new tax or raise tax rates in the budget.
Zoramthanga also presented supplementary demands for the current fiscal, amounting to Rs 3,474.16 crore.
�The total disbursement for revenue expenditure for the year 2020-21 is estimated to stand at Rs 9,021.85 crore, which is 84.20 per cent of the total budget estimate,� Zoramthanga said in his budget speech.
�The scope of revenue expenditure is very wide. It includes expenditures on salary of employees, pensionary charges, interest payments, expenditure on large sectors like education, sports, road maintenance, power purchase, water supply, district administration, secretariat administration, home, jails, police, purchase of foodgrains, etc. It also includes maintenance cost of infrastructure projects which were already commissioned by the State Government,� he said.
The total fund earmarked for capital expenditure for development of the State amounts to Rs 1693.15 crore, which is 15.80 per cent of the total estimated expenditure.
�Capital expenditure is mainly for creation of assets for the public, including land and buildings, sports infrastructure, roads and bridges, irrigation and large machinery,� he added.
As the Central Government reduced the share of taxes of most States along with deficit grants, Mizoram needs to find more scope for generating revenue to establish space towards capital investments, he said.
Explaining the reason for receiving less funds from the Centre for the next fiscal, Zoramthanga said that the 15th Finance Commission had submitted its interim report for the financial year 2020-21, and the Union Budget has also been prepared largely in line with the interim report of the commission.
�For this particular year, the commission decided to distribute 41 per cent of the tax proceeds among 28 States of the country, and under these formulae, the share of Mizoram is 0.506 per cent which is quite satisfactory. However, the actual transfer for Mizoram as reflected in the Union Budget is even less than the amount recommended by the commission,� he said.
Further, during the 14th Finance Commission period, a Post Devolution Revenue Deficit Grant was recommended for 11 States, which was reduced to seven States in 2019-20. Now the present commission, in its report, has recommended 14 States to get similar benefit of this grant, which resulted in a sizeable reduction in the share of Mizoram, he said.
A sum of Rs 513 crore has been allocated for implementation of the Socio-Economic Development Policy, the flagship programme of the Mizo National Front (MNF) Government as against Rs 750 crore during the last financial year.
This is for the first time the annual budget of Mizoram was presented in February. Zoramthanga said this was done to curb the rush of expenditure at the fag end of the financial year.
