Central team coming today

Expressbuzz, Jan 6, 2010
BHUBANESWAR: With half of the districts reeling from drought effect, an inter-ministerial Central team will arrive in Orissa tomorrow for spot assessment of the situation.

Led by Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture Atanu Purukayasth, the 10-member team would mostly be visiting western and northern districts of the State over the next three days.

One team will assess the damage in Sambalpur and Angul while a second group will visit Nuapada and Kalahandi districts. The third team will go to two of the northern Sundargarh and Jharsuguda districts.

The State, which was hit by natural calamities like floods and drought in the past one year, recently submitted a memorandum to the Agriculture Ministry for Rs 2,257-crore Central assistance.

The State Government has projected its agriculture sector damage at Rs 236.9 crore while assistance towards crop loan interest waiver and liquidity for fresh loans have been pegged at Rs 737 crore.

The State, however, is faced with resource crunch having spent a massive chunk on its calamity mitigation measures.

As per the 12th Finance Commission recommendations, the State is eligible for Rs 339.03 crore for its Calamity Relief Fund (CRF) for 2009-10 of which, the Centre’s share stands at Rs 254.27 crore while the State’s contribution is Rs 84.76 crore. After the 2008 floods, the Centre sanctioned Rs 77.77 crore as advance out of the corpus of 2009-10 for the year 2008-09. Similarly, the State share of Rs 25.92 crore was also made available as advance by the State Government.

With the assistance spent, the CRF coffers go virtually empty. In fact, another Rs 103.69 crore advanced to the State from Natural Calamity Contingency Fund for the flood relief has been deducted from the CRF leaving the State with precious little for exigencies.

A similar second advance too has been adjusted from the State’s CRF account and the latter having spent more, its liabilities now stand at Rs 413 crore.