Centre’s Expenditure On Health Shoots Up More Than Three Times In April; Spends 19 Per Cent Of Annual Allocation

With the COVID-19 pandemic in full force, the Government's expenditure on health more than trebled in the month of April this year to almost Rs 13,000 crore, much higher than the figure of Rs 4,327 recorded in the same month last year, reports Business Standard.

In a different way to look at the data, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) spent 19 per cent of its allocated budget for the entire 2020-21 fiscal in the month of April alone. The figure stood at much lesser seven per cent in April of 2019, and three per cent in 2018.

At this rate of expenditure, the MoHFW is expected to exhaust the entire fiscal's allocated budget in a span of just five months.

It is said that a significant portion of the increased expenditure was spent on the creation of infrastructure for building testing capacity and procuring testing kits. A large part of the expenditure was also constituted by spending to procure personal protective equipment (PPE) kits and other medical gear.

Even for the Ministry of AYUSH, the expenditure shot up significantly as it spent over 13 per cent of the entire fiscal's allocation of Rs 2,100 crore in the month of April alone.