Odisha Finance Minister Bikram Keshari Arukha Presents Rs 1.18 Lakh Crore Vote-On-Account

Bhubaneswar: Finance Minister Bikram Keshari Arukha on Thursday presented Rs 2.55 lakh crore budget for 2024-25 with vote-on-account grant for the first four months at Rs 1.18 lakh crore, focussing on development of youth, agriculture and infrastucture.

It is last budget of the fifth term of the Naveen Patnaik government. “Happy to receive a copy of #Budget4NewOdisha through a pen drive as part of #GreenBudget initiative. Odisha is one of the pioneer states to adopt complete e-budgeting & Finance Minister Bikram Keshari Arukha is presenting the budget through a tablet which will be available to citizens online,” the CM tweeted earlier. 

The Finance Minister told the Assembly that Odisha has become a 100 million dollar economy. In 2023-24, the state posted a growth rate of  7.25%, which was 1% higher than the national average. The gap between state per capita income and national per capita income also reduced from 32% to 13%. According to the preliminary estimates for 2024-25, Odisha is likely to grow at 8.5 per cent, he added.

While highest resource allocation has been proposed for School & Mass Education Department with an outlay of Rs 24,764 crore, he said that Rs 21,000 crore would be set aside for development of roads, bridges, airports and railway. “Rs 1,000 crore has been allocated for Metro Rail project in the fiscal 2024-25,” he said in his budget speech.

This apart, the government allocated Rs 700 crore for the development of other railway projects in the state.

The Finance Minister also proposed 17% hike in Agriculture budget with an outlay Rs.28,944 crore for 2024-25.

Top 5 resource allocations (% of total budget size for 2024-25)

School & Mass Education – 9.71%

Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water – 8.84%

Health & Family Welfare – 7.74%

Water Resources – 5.2%

Planning & Convergence – 4.72%

Arukh further said that Rs 2000 crore revolving fund has been proposed for paddy procurement and on-time price disbursement. A total of 858 healthcare centres will be transformed in next 5 years with an proposed outlay of Rs 3389 crore.

DEPARTMENT-WISE BUDGET ALLOCATION