Niranjan Pujari To Present Highest-Ever Odisha State Budget Today

Bhubaneswar: Finance Minister Niranjan Pujari will present the annual budget for FY 2023-24 at 4 pm on Friday.  This will be the last full-fledged budget in Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s fifth term.

Earlier this month, the council of ministers approved the annual budget of Rs 2.3 lakh crore for 2023-24, the highest ever in Odisha and an increase of about 15 per cent compared to Rs 2 lakh crore placed for 2022-23.

According to sources, this Budget is likely to majorly focus on infrastructure and social security, apart from agriculture, education, health, rural development, sports and Mission Shakti. A substantial portion of the Budget may go towards funding the state’s premier health assurance programme, such as the Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana (BSKY). New irrigation facilities, payment incentives under KALIA, and other farm sector subsidies are also likely to find a place. There could also be special provisions and allocations for the Srimandir Parikrama Project, Lingaraj project and other temple development projects as well.

In July last year, Niranjan presented State Budget with Rs 2-lakh crore total outlay for 2022-2023 in the Assembly. This followed an interim budget for 4 months – April to July 2022, – in March since a full-fledged Budget could not be presented at that time in view of the ongoing panchayat and urban polls.

According to the Odisha Economic Survey report tabled in the assembly on Thursday, the state’s economy has registered an impressive growth rate of 7.82 per cent in real terms against the national average of seven per cent in the current fiscal 2022-23 and is poised to grow even faster at 8 to 8.5 per cent in 2023-24.

This is significantly higher compared to the national average prediction of 6 to 6.8 %.

Odisha’s per capita income for the current fiscal was Rs 1,50,676 as against the national rate of Rs 1,70,620. Growing at an annual compounding rate of 10.9 per cent, it has successively reduced its gap with India’s PCI, which has grown 9.4 per cent in nominal terms since 2011-12. “Odisha, in the shortest possible time, is going to converge and exceed India’s per capita income bringing all-round prosperity driven by growth, innovation, technology,  governance, institutional innovation and effective decentralization,” the report said.