CM asks officials to mobilise resources outside budget

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, OCT. 13. The Chief Minister, Mr.N. Chandrababu Naidu, has exhorted senior officers of his Government to explore possibilities of raising resources outside the budget through innovative means to supplement the allocations already made.

Addressing a meeting of IAS, IPS and IFS officers at Jubilee Hall on Friday, Mr. Naidu said user charges could be levied wherever possible to raise additional resources, which would be ploughed back to the department for improving the standard of service.

Citing an instance, he said he had been to the Nehru Zoological Park in the city the other day, which is in possession of 500 acres of land. Its maintenance can be improved by such means as raising the entry fee for the visitors, he suggested.

Mr. Naidu also underlined the need to identify the new areas for community participation and private sector participation for raising resources as also for creating infrastructure and provision of services. Suitable policy changes could be made wherever required.

``Even Communist China and Vietnam are encouraging private participation in a big way,'' he said. In a slide presentation, he reminded the officers about the growth targets set in the ``Vision 2020'' document and told them curtly to change their traditional ways of functioning. A great majority of officers are occupied with efforts rather than results. The bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle, he said citing liberally the quotations from famous writers.

The Chief Minister said the average growth target for agriculture for the next five years was 6.10 per cent. It was 9.70 per cent for industry and 11.54 per cent for services. Due to unfavourable seasonable conditions, there had been a negative growth of -3.77 per cent in agriculture in 1999-90. But the target for the next year is 7.94 per cent.

Mr. Naidu presented a comparative picture of the growth indices pertaining to China and India and said the former achieved rapid progress as it moved with the times and effected changes in the systems.

He said the electronic interface for all Government information and services would be ready by March next. All services would be provided through about 20,000-odd Internet connections.

Mr. Naidu wanted periodic monitoring of all development indicators, at least once in a month by the Chief Secretary. He said a similar high-level review meeting could be held once in six months. He pointed out two types of development indicators: core and functional.

The core indicators were those which were directly related to the goals set in Vision 2020 and the functional indicators related to functioning of each department. The core indicators had been further categorised into economic, social and infrastructure.

He also stressed the need for asset management and reduction of administrative cost. Additional resources could be raised through user charges and the budgetary allocation should be made for maximum impact.

The Chief Secretary, Mr.C.S.Rao, in his welcome speech, said all IAS, IPS and IFS officers would be just "one step behind you (CM) in translating the vision into a reality". Most of the Ministers were present.

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