Member
of the Seventh Central Pay Commission Rathin Roy has suggested that to meet its
fiscal deficit target the Government should merge the basic pay and dearness
allowance (DA) of central government employees in the current year and defer
implementing any real increases in pay and pensions. This, the member has said,
could be done by compensating those who would have to bear the burden of the
deferred effect by giving them a “more generous award distributed over several
years”.
“I
am saying that the increment need not all be given at one go... It can be
staggered and made more generous… So this could be done for pay and for
pension,” Dr. Roy told The Hindu in an exclusive interview. “Now I am not
competent to say whether this is politically feasible or not,” he, however,
added.
Last
month, the Union Cabinet set up an empowered committee of secretaries under the
Cabinet Secretary for processing the recommendations of the Commission.
The
pay and pension revision recommendations of the Commission are scheduled to
take effect from January 1, 2016, but Dr. Roy, who is also the National
Institute of Public Finance and Policy’s Director, has suggested that the
implementation should be pushed to April 1.
What
they should get, from April 1, 2016, is what they would get if we merge the
basic pay and the DA, which is more or less what they are already getting, he
said. “That will mean some increase in allowances but other than house rent
allowance the burden of that [on the government budget] will not be very high.”
He has also recommended that the Government defer allowances, principally the
house rent allowance. “The case for that is strong because we are in the midst
of fairly flat growth in consumption expenditure and rents are not going up
much.”
Ahead
of the presentation of Union Budget 2016-17, the Government is considering
options for keeping the fiscal deficit for the next year within the Fiscal
Responsibility and Budget Management target. The Government’s fiscal deficit in
2008-09, the year the Sixth Central Pay Commission award was implemented,
doubled to 6 per cent, though not all of the increase was on account of the pay
and pension hikes. Currently, Central government pay and allowances account for
1 per cent of the country’s GDP.
