Now, Budget document to set financial goals for ministries

In a first, the Union Budget for 2017-18 will come along with a separate document titled ‘Outcome Budget’, which will list financial targets for each ministry to be met during the financial year. The suggestion has been approved by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). This was among a slew of recommendations made by a panel of secretaries.

According to highly placed sources, a group of secretaries, which was formed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on ‘Innovative Budgeting’, suggested advancing the budget cycle as well as removal of Plan-Non Plan distinction. The same panel recommended the Union Budget should have a separate document on outcome budget, which will list allocation targets for various ministries.

The Union Budget for the next fiscal, which will be the first without any Plan and Non-Plan distinction and with the rail budget subsumed in it, is also likely to be presented tentatively by February 1, as the Union Cabinet has already approved the merger of the Rail Budget with the Union Budget.

As of now, ministries send their own outcome statements to the finance ministry, indicating their plan of spending the budgetary allocations throughout the financial year.

Sources pointed out that this time, after brainstorming with Niti Aayog, the PMO decided that the ministries will be given an outcome budget, which they will have to follow. This will ensure time-bound and efficient spending by the ministries, they added.

The secretaries panel on innovative budgeting suggested that medium term as well as long term macro-economic goals should be set through a collaborative process between Niti Aayog, finance as well as the line ministries. Sources in the know informed this newspaper that subsequently, the finance ministry is said to have indicated to Niti Aayog that the Union Budget will come along with an outcome budget document. It will have details of actual deliverables and outcomes, they added. The panel of secretaries on innovative budgeting was one of several such panels that Mr Modi set up in December 2015, seeking suggestions on good governance.

The government shortlisted some of the doable suggestions and asked the ministries concerned to implement them on priority.

Last month, the PM even called a meeting of all ministries to oversee the status of the implementation of these suggestions.