The Ministry of Women and Child Development is working out a detailed guideline and institutional mechanism preferably within the Comptroller and Auditor General, CAG, for gender budgeting.

This was stated by Secretary in the Ministry of Women and Child Development Ms Neela Gangadharan while addressing the participants of the two-day conference on gender budgeting in New Delhi today.

She said, her ministry is in the process of promoting gender audit of all policies, programmes and schemes. This will throw light on the gaps in conceptualization, implementation and targeting of beneficiaries.

Ms Gangadharan added that it was very important that the planning and budgeting mechanisms are improved and made more outcome-oriented to target and benefit more women. She, however, expressed concern about the availability of sex disaggregated data, which remains a major challenge.

AIR correspondent reports an important tool for gender budgeting is gender budget statement which comprises of two parts. The first part reflects programmes and schemes which have hundred per cent allocation for women. The second part reflects those schemes where at least thirty per cent of the allocation is for women.