MGNREGS spend seen within FY24 RE

It has released Rs 78,500 crore so far in the current fiscal. As against the availability of Rs 91,476 crore (including write-back of some funds from the previous year) as of March 12 of the current fiscal, the expenditure/releases stood at Rs 97,928 crore or 107% of the available funds for the MGNREGS.

The gap in resources—the difference between availability and expenditure– would be met from the balance Rs 7,500 crore to be released from the current year’s revised budget.

“The overall expenditure from the budget will be within the revised estimate in FY24,” the source said.

Due to rampant misappropriation of funds allocated under the flagship scheme, the Centre made a five-year-low provision of Rs 60,000 crore in the FY24 budget estimate. In the revised estimate for the year, it enhanced the allocation to Rs 86,000 crore.

MGNREGS aims to provide at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household in rural areas of the country, whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work, mainly during off-seasons.

So far in FY24, 290.95 crore person days work have been generated. For the whole of FY23, the number was 293.7 crore.

According to official data, month-wise work demand has moderated from 33.71 million in June to 17.67 million in November 2023. It has since increased to 21.2 million in January 2024.

In the meantime, the Centre is taking various initiatives to plug leakages, which some estimates suggest could be around 30% of the annual spending in the scheme.

From January 1, 2024, the government has made the Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS) mandatory for payment of wages. Under the ABPS, the Aadhaar of a worker is linked with her MGNREGS job card and bank account.

Direct benefit transfer (DBT) has saved an estimated 10% on wages on account of the deletion of duplicate, fake/non-existent, ineligible beneficiaries till March 2022.