Odisha Assembly passes Appropriation Bill, 2022

The Odisha Assembly Saturday passed the Appropriation Bill, 2022 allowing the state government to spend Rs 2 lakh crore from its consolidated fund during the financial year 2022-23.

While introducing the bill, Finance Minister Niranjan Pujari said the budget aimed at providing quality health service, education, development of infrastructure and capital investment.

The finance minister said of the Rs 2 lakh crore budget, Rs 89,590 crore has been allocated as administrative expenditure, Rs 1 lakh crore as programme expenditure, Rs 3,210 crore as disaster response fund and Rs 7,200 crore towards transfers from the state.

Pujari mentioned that the passage of the Appropriation Bill is imperative for taking forward welfare schemes. The Rs 1 lakh crore allocated for programme expenditure in 2022-23 is 33 per cent more than the 2021-22 fiscal.

The amount of Rs 38,732 crore towards capital outlay is 5.4 per cent of the GSDP. This allocation is more by 56 per cent in comparison to the previous fiscal, Pujari said, adding that many reformative measures are taken in this budget which aimed to ensure the proper implementation of 'Mo sarkar' (my government) and 5-T initiatives of the state government.

Pujari had presented the annual budget on July 2, the first day of the monsoon session. This time the full budget was delayed because of the panchayat and urban polls in February and March this year.

Both the opposition BJP and Congress members participated in the discussion before the passage of the Bill.