JAMMU: With a focus on reaping the harvest of the radical fiscal reforms undertaken by the State Government during the past three budgetary exercises, the Minister of Finance, Dr Haseeb A Drabu, today presented his 4th Budget in the State Assembly terming it a major step towards making Jammu and Kashmir a truly welfare state. “It will be a potential game-changer budget full of welfare initiatives,” he said.

“The Budget is a culmination of sustained work in building new systems for public expenditure management over the last three years. We have made concerted and coordinated efforts to overhaul the style and substance of financial management of the state with macroeconomic stabilisation complemented by structural reforms and followed by systemic changes. They have now set the stage for meaningful public policy interventions,” Dr Drabu said while presenting Rs 80000 crore Budget for the fiscal 2018-19 in the House.

The Finance Minister said J&K is the first state in the country that is presenting the budget in the first half of the last quarter of the current fiscal while the central budget is taking place a month later. “We were the first state to move from the archaic Plan-Non Plan Expenditure to Capital and Revenue Expenditure which was followed by other states. All the systematic changes been made so far have started paying off,” he said and added that a new, robust, sustainable and people-friendly financial architecture is taking shape in the State.

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