A Parliamentary Standing Committee said on Friday that NITI Aayog had failed to spend even meagre Budget allocations that were provided for its vital functions of research and monitoring of projects.
In its report scrutinising the Planning Ministry’s 2018-19 Budgetary allocation, the Standing Committee said the Ministry got an allocation of Rs 339.65 crore. Its Budget allocation for 2017-18 was Rs 252.52 crore, which was revised to Rs 279.79 crore. The expenditure during 2016-17 was Rs 225.38 crore.
Although the Budgetary allocation had increased to an extent, the Ministry of Planning “may impress upon the Government from time to time for higher grants keeping ,” the committee said.
It noted that the Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office (DMEO), established in 2015 to monitor programmes and initiatives of the Government, was further mandated to monitor the implementation of the Output Outcome Budget of the Government for 2017-18.
Although DMEO’s allocation was raised to Rs 18 crore during 2018-19, it had failed to utilise the allocated sums in previous years. Against the provision of Rs 15 crore up to January 2018 during 2017-18, it had spent only Rs 9.90 crore.