'Budget should be gender sensitive'

NEW DELHI: Budget proposals that are meant to impact the lives of women will be monitored with special care. To implement gender commitments, the government has been urged to examine such budgetary proposals separately.

This is necessary to ensure effective targeting of public spending, according to the expert group on classification of government transactions, headed by Mr Ashok Lahiri, chief economic advisor in the finance ministry.

Finance minister P Chidambaram had, in his 2004-05 Budget speech, referred to gender budgeting –– the presentation of budget data in such a manner as to reflect gender sensitivities in allocations.

The government may also undertake periodical benefit-incidence analysis of its programmes and schemes to assess their impact on the targeted beneficiaries, the expert group has said in a report submitted to the finance ministry.

The committee was set up by the finance ministry to review the existing norms for classification of expenditure between capital and revenue. The expert group was also asked to examine the feasibility of gender budgeting and suggested a suitable approach for such budgeting.

The government had asked the panel to suggest improvements in the current system for harmonising budgetary, accounting and economic classification.

The committee is of the opinion that transfer payments meant for capital creation by the transferee may be disclosed separately by classifying them as “capital grants� under the revenue section in the books of the transferor. The current classification system may be replaced with a multi-dimensional classification structure.