AIZAWL:
Mizoram government continues to reel under acute cash crunch and has been unable to disburse salaries and wages to its regular employees and contractual employees on time for two consecutive months.
Officials said that disbursement of August salaries would be delayed and the date of payment was yet to be ascertained.
It was informed that when the salaries were usually paid at the end of the months earlier, July salary was paid on August 10 for regular employees and August 5 for others.
A state finance department official, on condition of anonymity, said that the salaries would be disbursed to the employees after the state government receives a share of central taxes and other grants from the centre.
The state government has availed loan from the Reserved Bank of India (RBI) 36 times during the current fiscal (2022-2023) till August 11 to avoid closure of treasuries.
Officials said that Mizoram government was compelled to get loan from the RBI as ‘overdraft’ seven times during July 27 and August 3 while it also availed loan from the RBI through special drawing facility 19 times and 10 times through ways and means advances.
The total amount of loan availed from the RBI during the current financial year was Rs 993.57 crore.
The state government availed overdraft three times from the RBI via ways and means advances for 101 times during the last fiscal (2021-22).
The officials said that stoppage of payment and closure of treasury have been avoided by availing loans from the RBI as well as by controlling disbursement of funds from the treasuries.
Financial problems came after the closure of wine shops by imposition of the dry law from 2019, which resulted in drying up of state’s own resources, mainly driven by excise duties collected from sale of liquor.
The state government launched its Socio-Economic Development Program (SEDP), the flagship programme of the ruling Mizo National Front (MNF) during the last part of August, it is yet to be seen whether the government would be able to fulfill its election promises of disbursing Rs 3 lakh each to over a lakh families.
Apparently due to the cash crunch, the first installment of the SEDP to be disbursed to 60,000 families was reduced from the proposed Rs 50,000 for each family to Rs 25,000 which would still entail an expenditure of Rs 150 crore from the state exchequer.
The government claimed that the flagship programme could not be launched earlier in accordance with the poll promise in 2018 due to financial hardship being faced by the state due to the pandemic.