Although the department of AIDS Control under the Union health ministry has exhausted its allocation almost completely, it failed to achieve the physical targets set for the last financial year.
During the year of 2007-08, original allocation was Rs 815 crore and it was later revised at Rs 953.89 crore and out of that Rs 917.59 crore was spent. During 2008-09, the revised allocation was Rs 1123.36 crore and it utilised Rs 1032.09 crore. During 2009-10, the revised allocation stood at Rs 980.15 crore and it spent Rs 961.65 crore. The allocation for the current year was Rs 1435 crore. If the report by the Parliamentary Standing Committee is any indication, the department has failed to achieve the targets during these years.
“The Committee is constrained to observe that the achievement level under many of the physical targets set during 2009-10 has been far from satisfactory. There are instances of severe under- achievements under the components like - setting new core group targeted interventions; setting up new bridge population targeted interventions; setting up new blood component separation units; setting up new district level blood banks etc,” the panel said.
“The Committee fails to understand that under such circumstances how the department has utilized more than 98 per cent of the funds during 2009-10 without achieving the satisfactory level of achievement under many of the physical targets. The Department needs to understand that it is good to achieve financial targets but what is more important is that achievement of the financial targets should be commensurate with the achievement of the set physical targets. The same is apparently missing here. Under such circumstances, the committee has serious doubts over the planning and the subsequent execution strategies of most of the components of the Programme,” the report said.
“The Committee can only infer that either the funds sought have been miscalculated or the Department has pumped in more money under certain components running successfully whereby it could show a higher percentage of utilization of allocated funds. The Department needs to clarify the same,’’ it said.
