Chief Minister, Neiphiu Rio while interacting with the press after presenting the State Budget for 2022-23 on 22th March 2022 at the Nagaland Legislative Assembly Secretariat, Kohima stated that the pandemic has affected the State’s finances over the last two years and added that it was only during the last quarter that the State witnessed noticeable improvement in the resource position. Stating that the since the first quarter started on a negative trend, the Government was compelled to move for austerity measures as was done during the year 2020-21 to avoid a financial crisis. The austerity measures were effected for expenditure items on OE, MV, TE and maintenance upto 20% of the budget allocations. The Government also decided to defer appointments to fill retirement vacancies and freeze vehicle purchases.
The Chief Minister stated that the last quarter of 2021-22 had seen a huge climb in the GST revenues, resulting in a windfall of Rs. 547.10 crore in receipts under Share of Central Taxes and Duties over what was reflected in the Union Budget (BE) of 2021-22. Even the States revenues witnessed a growth of Rs. 42.45 crore over the Budget Estimates.
However, despite such improvements, the Chief Minister stated that the State was still struggling to neutralize the huge negative impact of the losses in Share of Central Taxes and Duties incurred during the last two years (Rs. 925.42 crore short during 2019-20 and Rs. 1341.99 crore short during 2020-21).
Rio said that the owing to the various measures mentioned the year 2021-22 is estimated to close with a deficit of Rs. 2363.04 crore and clarified that it was an improvement of Rs. 316.42 crore over BE figure of Rs. 2679.46. He termed it an outstanding achievement at a time when the world was undergoing financial crisis. He also added that the Government will keep working to reduce the deficit steadily to bring it to more manageable levels in the coming years.
The Chief Minister also stated that that during 2022-23, the Government will introduce two significant initiatives, Chief Minister’s Micro Finance Initiative and the Chief Minister’s Micro Finance Initiative which have been designed to have a wide impact on the people of the State. Highlighting the schemes, Rio stated that Chief Minister’s Micro Finance Initiative was to provide affordable credit to farmers, Self Help Groups and Farmer Producer Organisations in the form of subsidy as well as credit subvention to various identified activities in the agri and allied sectors. The Chief Minister’s Health Insurance Scheme will provide health coverage upto Rs. 5 lakhs per annum to all citizens of the State irrespective of family income. The scheme will provide cashless service covering various secondary and tertiary care procedures through empanelled hospitals, both within and outside the State covering both Government as well as private hospitals.
Chief Minister Rio also stated that a key reform that will significantly impact the functioning and efficiency of the Government was the creation of the PIMS database of all Government employees.
(Nongozo, Asst Director & Akummeren, IA)
