The Delhi government has begun preparing the budget estimate for the 2024–25 fiscal and the revised estimate for 2023–24 and directed all departments to furnish realistic targets.
In a circular to all the departments on September 25, the Finance Department said that the departments should send the estimates by October 13 in prescribed format.
“The Finance Department has initiated the process of preparing the revised estimates (RE) for 2023–24 and budget estimates (BE) for 2024–25,” . It also said meetings regarding budget estimates and revised estimates will start from the last week of October.
“Revised Estimates/Budget Estimates should be formulated taking a realistic assessment of the requirement of funds which can be utilized by the department during the financial year,” it said while highlighting some of the discrepancies that have continued to occur in the framing of budget estimates by the departments.
According to the circular, it has been noticed earlier that in a large number of cases, the departments have not assessed the requirement of funds under new object heads realistically or classification was not done under specified object classes, resulting in avoidable re-appropriation of funds.
“All the departments are requested to ensure that the classification of expenditure as per the revised or amended primary units of appropriation or standard object heads to avoid excessive re-appropriation and supplementary grants,” it said. It also said re-appropriation of funds was taken by the departments, but they were not able to utilise even their original budget estimates.
“There were also cases where the actual expenditure at the close of the financial year was found to be either in excess or short of budget provision.
