The ambitious mission was launched by Modi government in 2015 with the objective of providing core infrastructure and decent quality of life in 100 selected cities.
NEW DELHI: The number of reports brought out by the country’s top audit body, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, has come down sharply in the past five years, raising concerns that the government’s financial accountability is not coming under the CAG’s gaze very closely. The total number of CAG reports relating to central government ministries and departments came down from 55 in 2015 to just 14 in 2020, a fall of nearly 75%, a reply to an RTI application filed by this newspaper said.
The CAG’s mandate is to serve as a watchdog, bringing out financial, performance and compliance reports of the government. “The CAG is the supreme audit institution of India and is expected to promote financial accountability and transparency in the affairs of the audited entities,” the CAG said in its 2019-20 own performance report. The power its reports yield came out starkly during the United Progressive Alliance government of Manmohan Singh.
Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Nearly 70 per cent of expenditure on health has to be borne by the patients and this pushes about 60 million Indians into poverty each year, the Finance Commission has said.
In its report, the top panel has made strong remarks on the poor healthcare system, saying even 73 years after independence the quality healthcare has remained elusive for many. The report said the Covid-19 pandemic had exposed various fault lines in the country’s health sector.
“We find about 70 per cent of expenditure on health is out of pocket, one of the highest globally. High out of pocket expenditure poses the largest risk to the population living below, and at the margins of, the poverty line,” it said.
Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Despite the Centre and various state governments announcing several initiatives to attract multinationals looking to shift base outside China post-Covid-19 pandemic, India has been left behind by countries like Vietnam, Taiwan and Thailand, which have emerged as the preferred destinations for most such companies.
Taking note of this, a parliamentary standing committee has flagged administrative and regulatory hurdles in India as among the main reasons. “The committee feels that the main challenges faced by the country presently are administrative and regulatory hurdles, inadequate and costly credit facility, tedious land acquisition procedure, inadequate infrastructure facilities, high logistics cost and large unorganised manufacturing sector, among others,” stated the standing committee in its report titled ‘Attracting investment in post-Covid Economy: Challenges and Opportunities for India’. The report was tabled in Parliament in the just