Bihar set to increase size of its green budget for next financial year

Bihar is set to increase the size of its “Green Budget” for the next financial year (2024-25) compared to this year, according to a senior official of the state’s environment, forests and climate change department. 

The primary focus will be on dealing with the threat of climate change and augmenting environmental conservation by promoting renewable energy and afforestation. 

This will be the fifth green budget of the eastern state, which was the first in the country to introduce a green budget in 2020-21.

“Bihar's green budget size is likely to increase when the state government presents its annual budget in the Bihar Assembly next month. Recently, a high-level meeting of top officials of the environment, forests and climate change as well as finance departments was held to give the final shape to the green budget,” the official told Down To Earth..

Officials of both departments have discussed the outcome of the green budget to finalise the proposal to increase its size. 

The increase in the size of the green budget is likely to boost the state's efforts to combat climate change, according to officials of the finance department.

The budget for the current financial year saw a 28 per cent increase in the state’s green budget. The green budget outlay for 2023-24 was Rs 9,930.77 crore, 3.79 per cent of the total budget.

The Mahagathbandhan government, led by Nitish Kumar, is likely to present a budget of Rs 3 lakh crore for 2024-25. Last year, the government presented a budget of Rs 2.61 lakh crore. After education and health, major provisions will be made for the green budget, according to officials.

The government has been providing opportunities for the private sector to invest their corporate social responsibility (CSR) in achieving low-carbon growth and sustainable development in the state through the green budget.

“Green budgeting practices in Bihar have also apparently indicated the state's preference for contributions by the private sector towards achieving sustainability. The success of such tagging hugely relies on the collective action of stakeholders, especially government departments, civil society, and the private sector to attain sustainable development goals and the targets set by the state government,” finance department noted on the government website.

Bihar Finance Minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary, in the last assembly session in 2023, announced that the government is working for environmental conservation and to make the state resilient to climate change. He also highlighted the government's measures to increase green cover.

The state government’s official website claimed that the green cover in Bihar has increased from 9.9 per cent in 2019 to 14.75 per cent in 2021 after a major plantation campaign in the last decade. 

The government also linked the green budget to its most ambitious scheme of Jal Jeevan Haryali Abhiyan that began in 2019 for the conservation of the environment and to expand green cover, pollution control, rooftop solar, watershed and other conservation programmes.

“Since 2020-21, the Bihar government has been presenting a green budget that has a broader focus on incorporating sustainability considerations in policy planning and implementation processes. This exercise aims to align budgetary tracking and tagging with local and national environmental targets and commitments. It has also been considered as a toolkit to analyse the sectoral environmental orientation and their prioritised green allocation," the official document of the green budget highlighted this.

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