The government is looking to spend close to Rs 1,880 crore in the next fiscal, up by over 30 per cent from 2007-08, on new offices, residential and other buildings.
NEW DELHI: The government is looking to spend close to Rs 1,880 crore in the next fiscal, up by over 30 per cent from 2007-08, on new offices, residential and other buildings for half a dozen of its departments.
More than half of the capital outlay earmarked for such activities in the next fiscal would go to the two Finance Ministry departments -- CBDT and CBEC -- and the police forces, while these allocations have been increased for embassies and missions abroad and the Defence Accounts Department as well.
The maximum increases have been proposed for Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), while the outlay has been marginally cut down for construction of office and residential buildings by CPWD.
The proposals have been made in the Expenditure Budget 2008-09 presented by the Finance Minister P Chidambaram.
Finance Minister had proposed a capital outlay of Rs 1,340 crore to these six departments for construction or purchase of office, residential and other buildings in his 2007-08 budget, which was revised upward by Rs 100 crore.
Of the total Rs 1,880 crore proposed for the next fiscal, over Rs 1,000 crore has been earmarked for purchase or construction of office buildings, while more than Rs 800 crore is towards residential space.
The capital outlay for such activities have been raised nearly 25 times for CBDT, while the same for CBEC has been hiked nearly 12 times. The proposals are for hiking the outlay on purchase of ready-built office and residential buildings for CBDT in 2008-09 to Rs 201 crore. This include Rs 198 crore for office and Rs three crore for residential buildings.
For CBEC, he has proposed an outlay of Rs 145 crore for purchase of ready-built office buildings and Rs 20 crore for residential buildings.
The revised estimates for the current fiscal 2007-08 stand at Rs 8.19 crore for CBDT and Rs 14 crore for CBEC for such activities, while the actual budget proposals were Rs 8.47 crore (CBDT) and Rs 40 crore (CBEC) for the year.
For the embassies and missions abroad, Finance Minister has proposed Rs 200 crore for acquisition or construction of office buildings and another Rs 100 crore for residential buildings. For the current fiscal ending March 31, these allocations are at Rs 165 crore and Rs 85 crore respectively.
Expenditure Budget for next fiscal has also proposed Rs 540.80 crore for construction of office buildings for Police, and Rs 284.04 crore for their residential accommodation.
For 2007-08, the budget proposals were for a capital outlay of Rs 435.70 crore towards construction of office buildings for Police, which was revised to Rs 521.60 crore. For office buildings, the budget had proposed Rs 278.80 crore, which was revised downward to Rs 255.70 crore.
The Finance Minister has also sought increasing capital outlay to the Defence Accounts Department toward construction of buildings to Rs 38.58 crore in the next fiscal, as against Rs 23.77 crore proposed for 2007-08 in the previous budget that was revised to Rs 25.38 crore.
According to the Expenditure Budget Statement of Non-Plan Capital Outlay, the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) is the only one to see a decline in allocation towards construction of office and residential buildings.
As against a revised estimate of Rs 237.15 crore for the current fiscal, CPWD would get Rs 227.63 crore toward construction of office buildings in the next fiscal. Budget proposals for the current fiscal were for Rs 177.05 crore.
The department would get Rs 123.19 crore for construction of residential buildings in 2008-09, as against Rs 124.16 crore proposed for the current fiscal in last budget that was revised to Rs 129.74 crore.
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