PILOT EDITION OF ODISHA BUDGET CONCLAVE 2020-2021
II ODISHABARTA II
Bhubaneswar:Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB) in collaboration with the Government of Odisha organized the pilot edition of Odisha Budget Conclave, the People’s Budget 2020-21 on the 7th of March 2020.
The goal of the conclave was to showcase an elaborate and intricate analysis of the Odisha Budget and how it is going to shape the state’s economy in the coming financial year.
Dr. Amar Patnaik (IA&AS (Retd.), Hon’ble Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha), Shri. Jugal Kishore Mohapatra (IAS (Retd.), Chairman, NABFINS), Shri Upendra Nath Behera (IAS (Retd.), Chairperson, OERC), Shri Ashok K.K. Meena (IAS, Principal Secretary to Government of Odisha, Finance Department) were the esteemed speakers for the occasion.
The conclave was a panel discussion which was moderated by Professor Subha Kant Padhi, who started the event with an introduction to the subject and then posing the question as to how we arrived at Odisha Budget 2020-21 and requested the speakers to provide their views and suggestions to answer the same.
Shri Ashok K.K. Meena was the first speaker, and he introduced the audience to the provisions of the budget. He also shed some light on the new aspects of the budget that incorporated structural and formative changes. He spoke about the separate agriculture budget as well.
The second speaker for the day was Dr. Amar Patnaik who spoke about the sectored structure of the budget which included the nutrition budget, the agriculture budget and how this provision should aim at achieving synergy between the central government and the state government’s agricultural department to reap maximum benefits for the farmers.
Shri Jugal Kishore Mohapatra, who was our third speaker, illuminated the audience on how the budget must be evaluated to best fit the context which must encompass the quality of resource mobilization, expenditure allocation, fiscal management and liability of estimate. He said the budget must be credible and absolutely.
Shri Upendra Nath Behera, who was the last speaker for the day expressed his views about the robustness of the budget wherein with the aid of minimum support price and subsidy the problem of poverty and hunger could be tackled.
Once the panel members were done with their speeches, it was time for the Q&A session, where the students asked insightful, inquisitive questions. The event came to an end with the vote of thanks and was an immense success.
