SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo on Friday directed administrative departments to expedite preparations for integrating Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into their budgetary proposals for the next financial year, with a High-Level SDG Steering Committee proposed to oversee the exercise.
Chairing an interdepartmental coordination meeting, Dulloo stressed the need to operationalise the SDG-aligned budgeting framework ahead of the forthcoming budget exercise and ensure that departmental schemes are linked to measurable development outcomes.
He called for seamless integration of the proposed SDG Monitoring Dashboard with the Public Financial Management System (PFMS) and the Budget Estimation, Allocation and Monitoring System (BEAMS) to enable automated, real-time tracking of budgetary allocations and expenditure.
The Chief Secretary said the integration would strengthen transparency and accountability in public spending. He also directed the Higher Education Department to pursue its pilot exercise systematically, addressing operational challenges before the framework is extended to other departments.
The initiative, being pursued by the Planning, Development and Monitoring Department (PD&MD) in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), aims to establish a link between budgetary allocations and specific SDG targets, indicators and development priorities.
The framework involves two processes — scheme-SDG mapping, which assesses the alignment of scheme objectives and guidelines with specific SDG targets, and SDG budget tagging, which identifies the corresponding financial allocations.
The exercise is envisaged to cover all five phases of the budget cycle, including preparation, approval, execution, accounting and oversight.
Secretary PD&MD Owais Ahmad informed the meeting that the National Indicator Framework (NIF)-aligned SDG goals, targets and indicators had been shared with administrative departments and district administrations to facilitate the mapping of schemes and alignment of budgetary provisions.
He said regional-level training sessions for departmental heads and district officers would follow the completion of Phase-I workshops for master trainers, enabling uniform adoption of the mapping and budget-tagging methodology across the Union Territory.
Under the proposed institutional arrangements, the Finance and Planning departments will coordinate the reconciliation of departmental frameworks, while individual line departments will identify the SDG contributions of their ongoing and newly proposed schemes. The dedicated SDG Cell will facilitate cross-referencing against the State Indicator Framework (SIF).
The Higher Education Department has been selected to pilot the initiative during the Revised Estimates (RE) exercise for 2026-27. The pilot will involve mapping its ongoing schemes against relevant SDG targets and indicators, providing an operational model for wider implementation.
Technical teams from the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and UNDP are working on integrating the SDG Monitoring Dashboard with financial management and budget monitoring systems, including BEAMS, to improve the tracking of expenditure alongside physical outputs and socio-economic indicators.
The meeting was attended by the Additional Chief Secretary, Finance; Secretary, PD&MD; other administrative heads; the State Informatics Officer of NIC; and officers from various departments.
