Austerity in Government
Minister of State for Finance, Namo Narain Meena informed the Lok Sabha that Ministry of Finance has advised all Ministries/Departments to effect a mandatory 10% cut in non-plan expenditure on Domestic and Foreign travel expenses, Publications, Professional services, Advertising & Publicity, Office Expenses, POL (except for security related requirement) and other administrative expenses for the year 2009-10. The remaining portion of non-plan expenditure will be subjected to a mandatory 5% cut. Ministries/Departments have full powers for incurring miscellaneous and contingent expenditure and data in regard to purchases is not maintained centrally. Since procurements are done by individual Ministries/Departments, all related complaints are also to be handled by them.
Orders have been issued by DOP&T permitting Ministries/Departments to make purchases of items required for office consumption directly from Kendriya Bhandar/NCCF without calling for quotations or for granting purchase preference to Kendriya Bhandar/NCCFs, depending on the value of procurement.
Perhaps many of the ministries are not aware of this advice going by the Government you could see in the media. The travel costs of senior babus are enormous. Just imagine an executive class ticket from Delhi to Chennai would cost about 26000 rupees while an ordinary class would cost 6000 rupees. Is there any justification for anyone to spend 20,000 rupees more for a two hour flight? And in these days of hi-tech communication facilities, what is the need for anyone to really travel?