Bihar,s is a hi-tech budget

When Bihar deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi, who has also the finance portfolio with him, tabled the state budget for the financial year 2009-10 in the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday, few realised that an old system of preparing budget, which was in vogue since independence, has been done away with.

The old theory of centralised control over every small and little item of expenditure leading to the creation of over 400 `unit codes’ has been replaced by a budget built on `object units’. The number of `unit codes’ has been reduced to just 62, and the 1,500 pages of budget documents were generated by computer. All this reduced the budget-preparation time from six months to just one month.

“According to the new budget-making theory, the head of an office is the finance manager of its establishment, and the budget is designed on the basis of `object heads’ which define the objective of the expenditure,” explained IAS officer and additional finance commissioner Arunish Chawla.

Chawla, who has done PhD from the prestigious London School of Economics, played a major role in the formulation of the new system of finance management in the state.

Officers and employees concerned recalled how tiresome the budget-making process used to be earlier. Expenditure provisions were complicated and calculations a time-taking exercise. For instance, for minor repairs in government buildings, provisions had to be made from 35 `unit heads’. For meeting office expenses, provisions had to be made from 20 `unit heads’. “There were different heads to purchase food for dogs and horses,” one official said, adding if one had to make an additional provision, he had to go through the tiresome process of re-appropriation.

“The number of operational sub-heads has been brought down by 25%. This, coupled with the corrections in the `unit heads’, has simplified the process at least 10 times,” Chawla said, stressing that the simplification will boost the state machinery’s ability to deliver.

No less important is the fact that the new budget system has been integrated with the computerised treasury system. “From April 1 onwards, heads of the departments can get information not only about their budget but also about the actual expenditure against their allotment 24X7 online,” Chawla said and added the process of budget allocation, allotment, passing of bills, generation of treasury voucher numbers and compilation of AG accounts will now be carried out without manual intervention.link