What is in news : The report by CAG said Karnataka’s spending on health, education lesser than others

Details :

• The Karnataka government resorted to huge market borrowings of Rs 48,499 crore during the financial period 2019-20, resulting in 57 per cent increase in cash balance for the current year at Rs 34,464 crore, compared to Rs 22,004 crore the previous year
• Off-budget borrowings made up 5 per cent (Rs 18,103 crore) of the total liabilities of Rs 3,37,520 crore in 2019-20, and capital expenditure of Rs 39,599 crore included Rs 1,194.23 crore towards serving the principal budget borrowings.
• Capital expenditure is basically incurred from borrowings. Though the state incurred huge borrowings, increase in capital expenditure over the previous year was a meagre one per cent. Share of capital expenditure is 19 per cent of total expenditure. The CAG noted that as against the initial budgeted cost of Rs 4,358.06 crore, in respect of 978 works stipulated to be completed on or before March 2020, progressive expenditure was Rs 2,341.06 crore.
• Of 978 projects which were incomplete as on March 31, 2020, 20 per cent had remained incomplete for more than three years. This not only resulted in cost and time overrun, but the state government also had to bear extra burden in terms of servicing debt and interest liabilities on borrowings incurred towards implementation of these projects.
• Although the budget “enhanced its allocation towards gender budgeting every year, the gender budget process lacked overall analysis, gender data and monitoring mechanism.
• The CAG noted that expenditure under education and health in 2019-20 was below that of other states. Analysis for 2014-15 to 2019-20 showed that priority towards education had decreased up to 2018-19, and there was no significant variance in priority towards health.
• While Karnataka’s actual rate of expenditure to aggregate expenditure on education and health during 2019-20 was 4.28% against the general category States’ expenditure of 5.21%, the expenditure of Kerala was 6.59%, Tamil Nadu 5.13%, Andhra Pradesh 4.86%, Telangana 5.14%, Maharashtra 4.34%, and Madhya Pradesh 4.7%.