Bhubaneswar: Transparency has ranked Odisha third among the States in the country in Budget Process Transparency,
This has been informed by the State finance principal secretary Ashok Meena at a high level review meeting on Economic Indexing chaired by chief secretary Asit Tripathy, here on Tuesday.
Meena appraised that Transparency International in its Annual Edition posed Odisha in 3rd rank next to Assam (1st) and Andhra Pradesh (2nd) with regard to transparency in budget making process. Odisha secured 66 raking points against 67 by Andra Pradesh and 70 ranking points of Assam. Other states in top five ranking included Jharkhand and Bihar who scored 60 and 59 ranking points respectively.
While complementing the progressive procedural reforms achieved by finance department in the matters of budget making, financial management and financial regulation, chief secretary Tripathy directed the department to work out a ‘composite index’ including agriculture, fishery and animal husbandry sectors for tracking States’ economy during pre-covid, covid and post-covid scenario. He also directed to focus on surrender of the funds lying idle in different government departments.
The meeting deliberated on different indicators of this ‘composite index’ being prepared with technical support from the center of excellence for fiscal policy and taxation (CEFT) at XIMB. It was decided to include the indicators representing agriculture, fishery, animal husbandry, mining, GST, motor vehicle tax, electricity consumption, VAT on Non-GST goods, excise duty, total man-days created, aggregate bank credit, unemployment rate, revenue position, fiscal deficit/surplus, Debt/GSDP ratio.
It was decided to use other high frequency data for a comprehensive objective raking.
Chief secretary advised to apply the ‘composite index’ for assessing the States’ economic trend on monthly and quarterly basis.
Development commissioner Suresh Chandra Mohapatra, additional secretary finance Sri Roop Narayan Das, additional secretary sinance Satyapriya Ratha along with senior officers of the department participated in the deliberations.
