Bihar is heading towards a financial crisis as the state has shown trends of in the fiscal year 2019-2020, even though there was no pandemic, against the revenue surplus in fiscal 2018-19, said additional deputy (eastern region)Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) Rakesh Mohan.
Revenue deficit is when the government has less income to meet its expenditure, whereas revenue surplus is when its net income is higher than projected expenditure.
The revenue deficit in 2019-20 is expected to be around 2000 crore as against the revenue surplus in 2018-19 of 6897 crore.
In 2018-19, the total budget was 2,09,490 lakh crore whereas the actual spending was 1.60 lakh crore. The saving was 49,000, which is 23% of the total budget. In 2019-20, there are projections that the State Government could have saved more than 30%. Many departments have not been able to spend even 40% of their allotted funds. This is wrong because the budgets in the last few years are being prepared unrealistically without taking into account how much funds are available.