Billed as the first exercise of its kind in demystifying the process of drawing up Budget, Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday made public the draft Budget for 2003-04 that earmarks over 40 per cent of total allocations to irrigation and power.
The estimated Budget size is Rs 42,081.62 crore (Rs 420.82 billion), an increase of 11.8 per cent compared to the current year's.
Releasing the draft budget proposals in Hyderabad on Wednesday, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said as a result of reforms and fiscal discipline measures, the fiscal deficit would be contained within reasonable limits and would decline from 4.67 per cent of the Gross State Domestic Product in 2002-03 to 4.13 per cent next year.
The 'performance-based Budget', involving a paradigm shift from conventional method of budgetary allocations to the one that is based on performance of individual departments, will be put for public debate in the next two weeks to elicit views from a cross section of society.
As part of efforts to cut down non-plan and wasteful expenditure while improving capital assets generation and plan expenditure, the draft Budget estimated a decline in the proportion of non-plan expenditure to the total expenditure from 73.75 per cent this year to 71.77 per cent next year.
Out of the total state Budget, the economic services, including agriculture, irrigation, power, rural development and transport account for 74.5 per cent, social services sector 22.11 per cent while 3.39 per cent of allocations are earmarked for general services.