Haryana Budget 2018-19

Presenting the state budget fourth year in a row in the state assembly, Haryana Finance Minister Captain Abhimanyu said the budget was aimed to “usher in a new era of balanced growth”, while adding that he tried to take every stakeholder on board in consonance with the theme of ‘Haryana Ek Haryanvi Ek’.

The highlight of the tax-free budget was farming sector with notable spending of Rs 4,098 crore earmarked for agriculture and allied activities in 2018-19, up from last year’s Rs 2,710 crore — an increase of 51.22%.The budget also announced 20% increase in outlay for irrigation and water resources and 25% hike in rural development outlay. The Budget clearly focuses on agriculture with a 51 per cent increase in allocation that also includes Haryana Kissan Pradhikaran. The aim is to make agriculture more sustainable.

On the flip side, the state’s debt liability, that was Rs 70,931 crore in 2014-15 when the BJP government came to power, has gone up by 127 per cent to Rs 1,61,159 crore. The government has launched a cashless medical scheme for government employees and pensioners for which the upper limit of Rs 5 lakh per admission has been done away with.

Key highlights:
• The budget document refers to doubling the farmers’ income by 2022.
• Diversification of agriculture to horticulture, animal husbandry, dairying, fisheries etc are among the steps the government has proposed to increase farmers’ income.
• Under the ‘horticulture vision’, the government has set the target to double the area under horticulture from the present 7.5% to 15% and triple the horticulture production in the state by 2030.To achieve this goal, the government has declared 340 ‘Bagwani villages’ in 140 crop clusters and prepared a crop cluster development programme for crop diversification.
• Animal husbandry and dairying is another priority sector government has identified.
• For further development of Murrah breed buffalo, the budget proposes to establish Murrah Reserch and Skill Development in Narnaund in Hisar in 208-19. This centre will train women, unemployed youth and farmers for self-employment.
• A veterinary livestock development diploma college under Hisar based veterinary university will be set up at Lakhnaur Sahib, Ambala.
• Haryana has become the first state in the country to adopt SDGs-2030 formulated by the UNDP. Under the SDGs, the state has initiated the process to implement performance-based budgeting. To bring about performance linkage in the Budget, Finance Minister introduced the concept of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and allocated Rs44,911.16 crore for schemes which will help achieve the goals. Among the goals, reduced inequalities, aimed at making minorities and differently abled economically self-reliant, has been allocated the highest allocation of Rs7,126.53 crore, while industry, innovation and infrastructure has the second highest allocation of Rs6,490.70 crore followed closely by affordable and clean energy with an allocation of Rs6,302.26 crore.
• An asset management cell has been created to identify government properties within and outside the state. A non-banking finance company — Haryana State Financial Services Ltd — has been set up for managing surplus funds of public enterprises.

By: Dr. Vivek Rana