Around Rs 70,000 crore
rupees has been provisioned in the Union Budget 2016-17 for the implementation
of the Seventh Pay Commission for central government employees, a finance
ministry official said.
While there’s no explicit
overall provision number, the government had said the Seventh Pay Commission
hike has been built in as interim allocation for different ministries.
“We have provisioned for
around 60-70 per cent of the total burden that was talked about,” a finance
ministry official said.
The Budget document
states that “the implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission due from January
1, 2016 is to be implemented during 2016-17 fiscal as also the revised One Rank
One Pension (OROP) scheme for Defense services.”
The ministry of finance has
provisioned for this in the Demands for Grants for individual departments and
ministries. It is built into and subsumed into those allocations.
In January, the
government had set up a high-powered panel headed by Cabinet Secretary P K
Sinha to process the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission, which will
have bearing on the remuneration of 47 lakh central government employees and 52
lakh pensioners.
The Panel of Empowered
Committee of Secretaries will function as a Screening Committee to process the seventh
pay commission recommendations with regard to all relevant factors of the
Commission in an expeditious detailed and holistic fashion.
Faced with the burden of
Pay Commission recommendations, there were concerns on whether the government
would be able to stick to the fiscal deficit target of 3.9 per cent for
2016-17.
However, in Budget Union
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley removed all doubts and promised to adhere to the
fiscal consolidation roadmap and stick to the 3.9 per cent deficit target.
(With PTI inputs)
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