Odisha Finance Minister Niranjan Pujari on Friday presented full-fledged state budget with Rs 2,30,000 crore outlay for the financial year 2023-24.
While presenting the annual budget, Pujari said that this year’s budget is based on CM’s vision of building a new Odisha – an empowered Odisha. According to Pujari, the Odisha government has been focusing on the agriculture sector and supporting this sector through a separate Agriculture Budget since 2013-14 with allocation of a sizeable portion of its resources.
An outlay of Rs.24,829 crore under the agriculture Budget, 2023-24 has been made which is around 20 per cent more than last year and three times of the budget estimate during 2016-17.
According to Pujari, the Budget Estimates for 2023-24 envisages an expenditure of Rs.2,30,000 crore. The capital outlay in 2023-24 is Rs.51,683 crore, which is about 6 per cent of GSDP.
Additionally, loans and advances, grants for creation of capital assets and other expenditure for capital formation together account for Rs.12,421 crore, which is 1.4 per cent of GSDP, Pujari added.
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In view of the paddy procurement operations which are increasing and to ensure timely payment to the farmers, a provision of Rs.2,000 crore has been made in the budget as revolving fund which will be utilised for paddy procurement operations besides the borrowings by OSCSC, said the state finance minister.
"This budget is a people's budget and it will take Odisha to new heights,” said Odisha Chief Minster Naveen Patnaik.
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Sharing details, Pujari said a sum of Rs.16,048 crore has been proposed for public health care, which is an increase of about 27 percent over previous year and about three times of the allocation in 2017-18. It amounts to 7 percent of the State Budget.