Parliamentary panel to examine Railway, General budget merger 26/09/2016 00:02


Parliamentary panel to examine Railway, General budget merger
26/09/2016 00:02
After the Cabinet's nod for ending a 92-year-old practice of presenting Railway Budget separately from the General Budget, the parliamentary panel on finance has decided to examine the move along with its ramifications thereof, as per the media reports. Recently, the Cabinet had decided to scrap a separate budget for railways and merge it with the General Budget, presentation of which would be advanced to spur spending and boost the economy, said the PTI report. According to the Lok Sabha bulletin dated September 22, the Committee on Finance has selected the “Budgetary Reforms including merger of Railways Budget with General Budget -- Ramifications thereof.” In a major overhaul of the budget process, the Cabinet headed by PM Narendra Modi had also decided to do away with classifications of expenditure into Plan and Non-Plan, making the exercise simpler, added the media reports. Moreover, in order to facilitate early presentation of the Budget, the finance ministry had proposed that the Parliament Parliamentary Budget Session be convened sometime before January 25, a month ahead of the current practice, media reports has said. Additionally, the parliamentary panel headed by the Congress MP M Veerappa Moily, will review the all budgetary reforms. The move comes after the opposition party, Congress, termed the government’s decision to merge the 2 budgets as “cosmetic, superficial and non-substantive changes”.