No cess, no tax for 'Bharat Nirman'

<div class="section0"><div class="Normal"><span style="" font-size:="">NEW DELHI: Where is the money for Bharat Nirman? That''s easy, finance ministry said on Tuesday, confident of funding the Rs 1,74,000-crore outlay for the rural infrastructure development, called Bharat Nirman, which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh fixed on Monday.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">The good news is that finance ministry is not planning to impose any cess or additional tax, not at least this fiscal, to fund the ambitious four-year "business plan" aimed at changing the face of rural India in six key areas — irrigation, roads, drinking water, housing, electricity and telephone — officials said.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">The trick is bulk of the huge outlay is already part of the expenditure budgets of the Centre and the states.If the programme takes off at breakneck speed, the maximum resource gap that could arise this fiscal would be of about Rs 15,000 crore, which can be easily adjusted in the Centre''s Rs 5.14 lakh crore annual expenditure budget.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">The need for higher spending, than what has already been provided for in the current year''s budget on rural infrastructure, would arise only if the utilisation of funds is fast. In that event, finance ministry stands ready to fully fund the additional requirements. In fact, PM decided on the outlay after taking finance minister P Chidambaram''s comfort level into consideration, officials said.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">Bharat Nirman, the Centre-piece of the Centre''s expenditure plan, dares to be bold and sets high targets to be achieved over four years by 2009. The goals are: to bring an additional 10 million hectares under assured irrigation; to connect all villages that have a population of 1,000 (or 500 in hilly areas) with a road; to construct 60 lakh additional houses for the poor; to provide drinking water to the remaining 74,000 habitations that are uncovered; to reach electricity to the remaining 1,25,000 villages and offer connection to 2.3 crore households; and to give telephone connectivity to the remaining 66,822 villages.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">Officials said most programmes are executed by the states and the funding will be shared by them, though the Centre will give the bulk of the money. Secondly, the possibilities of funding from multilateral financial institutions as well as domestic institutional finance will be explored. </span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">But much of the huge outlay is already being provided in the budget on rural infrastructure development schemes.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">Finance ministry estimates that providing assured irrigation for 10 million hectares could cost Rs 67,000 crore at the rate of Rs 75,000 per hectare for major and medium irrigation projects and Rs 50,000 per hectare for minor irrigation schemes. </span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">In 2003-04, all states put together spent Rs 12,042 crore on irrigation. At this level of spending, Rs 50,000 crore is already available for four years of Bharat Nirman.</span></div> </div>