UP depts withdraw over Rs10,000 cr in last two days of financial year

Various departments of the state government transacted and withdrew more than Rs 10,000 crore from treasuries in different districts in last two days of closing of financial years (2019-2020) on March 31.

Various departments of the state government transacted and withdrew more than Rs 10,000 crore from treasuries in different districts in last two days of closing of financial years (2019-2020) on March 31, confirmed a senior officer, on condition of anonymity.

Though a final picture about the total utilisation of funds in 2019-2020 will be clear only by the end of April, different departments submitted a large of number of bills in the last week to ensure the funds do not lapse.

“Even bills submitted to treasuries on Saturday have been cleared by the banks on Monday and Tuesday,” said the officer.

The state government had initially asked the departments to submit their bills to respective treasuries in districts by March 25. This deadline was later extended to March 31.

While officials in the know of things said a considerable improvement of about 20 percent was estimated on the budget utilization front in the last two months (February and March) of the financial year, a large chunk of funds might still remain unused at the end due to the nationwide lockdown coming in force on March 25.

A close scrutiny of the performance of various departments indicated that the state government was able to release sanctions for Rs 331,418.18 crore only against the total budgetary provision of Rs 526,809.21 crore in 2019-2020.

A sum of only Rs 269,027.55 crore was spent out of this amount by January 2020 showing only 51% use of budgetary allocations and 81% of the total sanctions issued by January 2020.