KATHMANDU, April 18: Prevailing disenchantment among Maoist combatants on integration, which suddenly raised the number of voluntary retirements, has immediately inflated State´s liability, forcing the government to arrange additional Rs 2 billion from initial calculations of around Rs 5.75 billion to send the combatants home.
Considering the initial estimates, Ministry of Finance (MoF) had released Rs 1.97 billion to Peace Ministry to initiate the voluntary retirement of 7,371 who chose it initially. But amid turn of situation, MoF released additional Rs 1.50 billion over the past few days to manage the cost.[break]
“We released Rs 1 billion on April 12 and also disbursed additional Rs 500 million on April 15,” said Finance Secretary Krishna Hari Baskota.
He informed Republica that MoF managed the fund from budget allocated under miscellaneous heading and also by pooling fund from different ´not so important´ headings. But at the same time he added, the release has exhausted all the fund MoF had at its disposal.
What troubles top official at MoF now is even the freshly released fund is estimated to fall short, as more Maoist combatants that were eagerly awaiting integration at cantonment have continued to opt for voluntary retirement.
“As we have exhausted all available reserves, arranging further fund will be a tough asking,” said a source at MoF, indicating that it will mainly force the Ministry to siphon off fund from different development headings.
With UCPN Maoist pushing hard for integration of 6,500 combatants in the Nepal army, the government had calculated that just around 10,550 combatants would opt for voluntary retirement.
Furthermore, as 9,705 combatants continued to stay in the cantonment eyeing their chances of integration, the government had estimated it will need only around Rs 4 billion to start with for integration. Following such calculation, MoF had immediately disbursed Rs 1.97 billion to the Peace Ministry, which was half of the total retirement cost, for fulfilling the liability in two annual tranches as promised.
However, when the integration process actually began, 13,671 combatants have already chosen to go for voluntary retirement by Tuesday.
“This has already made the total amount (Rs 3.50 billion) released so far insufficient. And we have been informed the number of voluntary retirements will go further up,” said the MoF source.
Given the situation, sources said MoF has already asked all the ministries to forward it the details of unspent budget held by them at present. Sources said such a step has been taken mainly to assess position of budget surpluses in different ministries, so that additional fund could be arranged from poorly faring projects.