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Health mission to get Rs 9,000 cr
February 24, 2005 15:46 IST
The National Rural Health Mission is likely to be one of the big-ticket social sector spending in 2005-06 budget but the allocation for the health sector may still fall short of requirement of Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion) for the next fiscal."Finance Minister P Chidambaram is likely to allocate at least Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion) more than the last year's allocation for the sector of Rs 7,000 crore (Rs 70 billion), because of the proposal to launch NRHM," official sources said on Thursday.
But the total allocation would still fall short by Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) as demanded by the ministry to meet its health programmes in the next fiscal.
However, the increased allocation indicates that the ministry could go full throttle for its programme of necessary intervention for both rural and urban healthcare, sources said.
"This clearly means that there would not be any fresh move to introduce any type of cess for meeting their budgetary requirements," they argued.
Meanwhile, sources in the health ministry said that their overall requirement for healthcare intervention would be around Rs 10,000 crore and since the NRHM was being introduced this year the Ministry would not be in a position to spend more than Rs 2,000 crore.
For the current fiscal the Ministry's budgetary allocation is little more than Rs 7,500 crore, they added.