Finance Minister Chidambaram asks ministries not to seek additional funds.

NEW DELHI: Faced with high fiscal deficit, the Finance Ministry has asked ministries not to seek additional funds over and above the budgetary allocations.

In view of the financial position of the central government, Finance Minister P Chidambaram in his recent meeting with financial advisors of different ministries has said that they should not "expect any sizeable increase" in the allocations during the course of the fiscal.

In the usual course, the Finance Ministry, on the basis of inputs from ministries, seeks approval of Parliament for raising the budgetary allocations through supplementary demands for grants.

Chidambaram, according to sources, has advised the ministries not to seek additional funds at the meeting that was called to review the progress of plan and non-plan expenditure.

The directive is aimed at containing the fiscal deficit which, in the first four months of 2012-13, stood at 51.5 per cent (Rs 2.64 lakh crore) of the budget estimates.

The government proposes to bring down fiscal deficit to 5.1 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product ( GDP) in the current fiscal, from 5.8 per cent in 2011-12.

Chidambaram, according to sources, has also asked the ministries not to formulate new Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS) as they were "unlikely to find acceptability in the Ministry of Finance".

Source : economictimes.indiatimes.com