Buoyed by better-than-expected performance on government finances’ front in 2010-11, the Centre on Thursday said it will keep a tab on public expenditure to ensure that Budget targets for this fiscal too are achieved.
“Efforts to get the economy on the path of fiscal prudence are on track… The government is committed to achieve the fiscal targets,” an official statement quoting finance minister Pranab Mukherjee at a meeting of Consultative Committee held on Wednesday said.
He further said that to ensure that scarce resources of the country are productively deployed, “it is extremely important to measure outcomes.”
In the Budget for 2011-12, the government had set fiscal deficit target at 4.6 per cent of the GDP and the revenue deficit target at around 3 per cent.
Now the government has also started providing, along with the Budget and revised estimate of current year and Budget estimates of the ensuing year, the details of actual expenditure incurred on each scheme “for a better analysis of the budgetary provisions and the trend in expenditure”.
Mukherjee said the government has been able to contain the fiscal deficit and revenue deficit well within the revised estimates in 2010-11.
It has been “possible due to higher tax collections as compared to revised estimates, higher receipts from non-tax sources and non-debt capital sources and savings under plan expenditure of government”.
