GUWAHATI: Increased flow of funds to the Northeast, constitution of the NITI Forum for North East and funds sanction for 10 projects under an infrastructure development scheme are some of the major achievements of the DoNER ministry in the year gone by.
An official statement here informed that the trend of budgetary allocation to ministry in the last few years reflected an increase of 51 per cent allocation in 2018-19 compared against actual of 2015-16.
The ministry was allocated Rs 1986.80 crore (actual), Rs. 2495.84 crore (actual), Rs 2682.45 crore (revised estimate) and Rs. 3000.00 crore (budgetary estimate) for the years 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19 respectively.
The trend of allocation to the region amongst the various ministries/departments (including both central sector and centrally sponsored schemes) in the last few years has shown an increase of 65 per cent in BE (budget estimate) 2018-19 as compared against BE 2015-16.
Being the nodal ministry, DoNER monitors and keeps track of expenditure under mandatory 10 per cent Gross Budgetary Support (GBS) by non-exempted ministries/departments, since inception. According to information from 51 non-exempted ministries/departments, as on date, under 10 per cent GBS, the actual expenditure in the Northeast has been Rs. 38845.26 crore as against RE (revised estimate) allocation of Rs 40971.69 crore for the year 2017-18 for 54 non-exempted Ministries/Departments.
The expenditure till December 28, 2018 is Rs 19960.66 crore against the earmarked allocation (budgetary estimate) of Rs. 47994.88 crore for the entire year.
The NITI Forum for North East was constituted earlier in the year under the chairmanship of vice chairman, NITI Aayog and co-chairmanship of minister of state (in-charge), DoNER. The members of the forum include chief executive officer, NITI Aayog, chief secretaries of North-eastern states, secretaries of key ministries/ departments, retired bureaucrats, economists and academicians.
The terms of reference of the forum include identification of various constraints on the way for accelerated, inclusive and sustainable economic growth in the region and to recommend suitable interventions for addressing identified constraints. Two meetings of the forum have been held so far.
The guidelines for administering the newly formulated North East Special Infrastructure Development Scheme have been circulated to all the Northeast states. Projects worth Rs 1458.12 crore have already been selected for funding since approval of the scheme on December 15, 2017. Of the selected projects, ten worth of Rs 473.11 crore have been sanctioned so far.
The Assam government had proposed for the establishment of a Northeast Industrial corridor from Dawki (on the India-Bangladesh border) via Guwahati to Nagaon and from Golaghat via Dimapur via Imphal to Moreh (on India-Myanmar border), following which the Asian Development Bank was requested for undertaking a feasibility study for it.
Among other initiatives during the year, the Union Cabinet had approved repositioning of North Eastern Council with Union home minister as ex officio chairman and minister of state, DoNER as vice-chairman. The North East Road Sector Development Scheme (NERSDS) has been extended till March, 2020 with an outlay of Rs.1000 crore.