Central, State-run schemes to constitute single corpus for reducing administrative costs: Dr Drabu

‘Finance Deptt to prepare blueprint for 27 schemes’

SRINAGAR, OCT 26: Minister of Finance and Labour & Employment, Dr Haseeb Drabu today said the J&K Government is working out a comprehensive policy to combine all the state and centrally-funded schemes into a single corpus to minimise the administrative costs incurred in their implementation.

“Presently, there are 20 Centrally-sponsored and seven J&K Government-funded schemes being run in the State and, in some cases, their implementation incurs huge administrative cost. In some schemes, the administrative cost is more than what is actually spent on the scheme. By aggregating these schemes, we will be saving a lot of money,” Dr Drabu said.

The Finance Minister was speaking during a meeting at his office chambers which was also attended by Principal Secretary, Finance, Navin Chaudhary, Commissioner Secretary, Labour and Employment, Kifayat Rizvi and Commissioner Secretary, Industries and Commerce, Shailender Kumar along with other officers of the Finance Department.

Referring to the Centrally sponsored Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), Dr Drabu said the actual spendings on the scheme is less than the cost of implementation, “In case of ICDS which gets an annual corpus of about Rs 500 crore, around Rs 220 crore is actually spent on the scheme itself while nearly Rs 280 crore turns out to be the administrative cost,” he said.

The Finance Minister said in certain cases, one scheme is implemented by multiple departments which results in wastage of manpower and public funds, “Ideally, these schemes should be compressed into one category. However, the Finance Department will prepare a draft on how to move forward,” he said. 

The Finance Minister said while there will be collaboration between two departments in implementation of these schemes, they will get dedicated manpower, which will also result in generating employment. He directed the Finance Department to prepare a blueprint for setting up single corpus for implementation of these schemes.