Govt buried key information in footnotes, understated external debt by Rs 2 lakh crore, says CAG https://theprint.in/india/governance/govt-buried-key-information-in-footnotes-understated-external-debt-by-rs-2-lakh-crore-says-cag/1767391/ Sampurna Panigrahi 18 September, 2023 Audit body found several other irregularities in govt’s accounts for FY22, including cess collections lying unused or misused, and expenditure being placed under opaque headings.
External Debt The CAG, in a section titled “depiction of critical information through footnotes”, found that the main section of the government’s accounts for the year 2021-22 showed the external debt of the Union government to be Rs 4.39 lakh crore based on a “historical” exchange rate. However, a footnote disclosed that at the latest exchange rate for the period (31 March, 2022), this debt would actually have been Rs 6.58 lakh crore — Rs 2.19 lakh crore higher.
This, the CAG said, was a violation of the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act, 2003, which lays out the rules the government should adhere to in the interests of good, stable, and transparent fiscal policy.
Small Savings Liabilities depiction of Small Savings Liabilities amounting to Rs 6,23,006.29 crore through a footnote, and not as part of the main body of the Statement or depicting the consolidated picture at any place, did not present an appropriate picture of Public Account Liabilities of the Union Government,” the CAG says in the report.
The CAG said it had raised the issue of the improper use of footnotes in the report for FY21 as well, and had suggested then that the government should introduce a section where all such disclosures could be made in a consolidated form “to aid readability and transparency”.
CESS The CAG also found that several cesses the government had collected from the public were unused, lying idle, or had been misappropriated for uses other than what they were intended for.
A cess is a form of tax the government collects for a particular purpose, the proceeds of which it does not need to share with the states. An example of cesses lying unused, as noted by the CAG, was the Health and Education Cess collected in 2021-22, a part of which was to go towards two funds — Madhyamik and Uchchtar Shiksha Kosh (MUSK) and Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Nidhi (PMSSN).
“During FY 2021-22, an amount of Rs 52,732 crore was collected towards Health and Education Cess, out of which Rs 31,788 crore (60 per cent) was transferred to Prarambhik Shiksha Kosh,