Fund allocation for MGNREGA has not been reduced, says Sitharaman

TIL Desk/Business/Bhubaneswar/ The fund allocation for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme(MGNREGA) has not gone down, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman here on Friday, adding it is a demand driven scheme and as and when the demand increases, the Centre provides money.

Addressing a post-budget press conference here, Sitharaman said: “Budget time allocation is one thing… and the scheme itself is a demand-driven scheme, as and when demand increases, we provide funds for it. This has been done in the past years since 2014.”

“If you look into the past years, we have added some money in the supplementary budget for MGNREGA. Even during Covid pandemic, the allocation for the scheme had crossed Rs 1 lakh crore,” she said. Notably, against Rs 73,000 crore allocation in the budget estimate (BE) of 2022-2023, the current allocation was reduced to Rs 60,000 crore. Commenting on funding for procurement of wheat and rice, she said that the government has not brought it down at all.