11 heads of spending with more than 50 per cent of the expenditure having no details

The government’s finances exhibit opacity in the way some of the funds have been spent with more than Rs 8,000 crore of expenditure being entered into the books with no accompanying explanation of how and where the money was spent, according to an analysis by The Hindu of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s audit of the finances.
“Scrutiny of Union Government Finance Accounts for the year 2014-15 disclosed that under 11 Major Heads of accounts (representing functions of the Government) expenditure of Rs.8,646.13 crore was classified under the Minor head ‘800-Other expenditure’ in the accounts, constituting more than 50 per cent of the total expenditure recorded under the respective Major Heads,” according to the CAG report. There were 11 heads of government spending where more than 50 per cent of the expenditure had no details of how and where the money had been spent.
Some of these heads are pretty significant, and should not be subject to such opacity. For example, the government spent around Rs. 6,260 crore on ‘Agriculture Financial Institutions’, the largest such head where opacity of a high degree exists. Of this, almost 96 per cent of the expenditure has been explained away as ‘Other Expenditure’.
Civil Aviation

Similarly, under the Civil Aviation major head of accounts, the government categorised 84 per cent, or Rs. 820 crore, as ‘Other Expenditure’. The report found that such opacity was prevalent across departments and ministries. “Some of the Major Heads where opaqueness in expenditure exists are Capital Outlays on Soil and Water Conservation (100 per cent of expenditure was booked under minor head ‘other expenditure’), Capital Outlays on Coal and Lignite (100 per cent), Capital Outlay on Non-Ferrous Mining and Metallurgical Industries (100 per cent), Other Social Services (99.84 per cent), Capital Outlay on Other Communication Services (98.81 per cent), Flood Control and Drainage (98.72 per cent), Agricultural Financial Institutions (95.85 per cent), etc,” the report shows.
It also found that the government, instead of having distinct heads of expenditure, had merged several types of expenditure — such as on interest subvention for short-term credit to farmers, subsidy operations of Haj charters, the below poverty line scheme, and others — and had simply classified them as ‘Other Expenditure’, further muddying the waters.
The CAG has been highlighting this opacity to the government every year since 2008, but almost nothing has so far been done to address the issue. As an interim measure, the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) began to insert footnotes in the accounts to demarcate when significant heads of expenditure had been merged under ‘Other Expenditure’.
This too fails to explain what exactly constitutes this `Other expenditure,’ and where the money has been spent. “The Controller General of Accounts replied (September 2015) that it had been sensitising all Ministries/Departments to meaningfully address this matter during the review of Statement of Central Transactions,” according to the report.