Thursday, June 30, 2011

Cost of MGNREGA is decreasing

It looks like cost of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the largest employment guarantee public works program in the world, is coming down. Its cost as a share of GDP, total expenditure and revenue receipts is decreasing and is expected to be 0.45 percent, 3.19 percent, and 5.08 percent respectively in fiscal year 2011-2012. Here is more on MGNREGA.

NREGA budget (Rs Crore)
2006-07 2007-08 2008-09** 2009-10** 2010-2011* 2011-2012*
GDP, current prices# 4,293,672 4,986,426 5,582,623 6,550,271 7,877,947 8,980,860
Total expenditure 583,387 712,671 900,953 1,020,838 1,108,749 1,257,729
Revenue receipts 434,387 541,864 562,173 614,497 682212 789892
NREGA allocated budget 11,300 12,000 30,000 39,100 40,100 40,100
NREGA/GDP 0.26 0.24 0.54 0.60 0.51 0.45
NREGA/Exp 1.94 1.68 3.33 3.83 3.62 3.19
NREGA/Rev 2.60 2.21 5.34 6.36 5.88 5.08

Source: Union Budgets; *estimate; **revised estimate'; # Economic Survey 2010-11

The main reason for the expected decline is that GDP, expenditure and revenue are estimated to increase but the budget allocation for MGNREGA is kept the same as during the previous fiscal year.

In FY 2010-2011, 5.49 crore households were provided employment (100 days employment  on demand to each household during lean season). The total persondays of employment created was 257.15 persondays (crore). Of this, the share of SCs, STs, and women accounted for 30.63%, 20.85%, and 47.73% respectively.