KATHMANDU, March 16: After facing a severe crunch in resources to manage its immediate financial liabilities due to low revenue collection, the government has stepped up efforts to streamline the implementation of the budget while maintaining fiscal discipline.
The government, in this regard, got the Economic Procedure and Fiscal Responsibility (first amendment) Bill, 2025 approved by a meeting of the House of Representatives (HoR) on Sunday. The document proposed by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Bishnu Prasad Paudel was endorsed by a majority of votes.
In his response to queries from lawmakers during the theoretical discussions on the Bill, Paudel said the bill aimed to mainly strengthen the budget implementation system, making this system more effective while maintaining fiscal discipline.
Paudel acknowledged that the government has been facing challenges to bear the general expenditures in the current fiscal year through the revenue collection.
“Around 1800 projects were selected for the current fiscal year and the guarantee of their implementation has been highly challenging,” he said. “The government is aware of the role of development partners and the needs and priorities of Nepal while formulating the budget. Projects capable of yielding high results have been focused.”
Echoing the need of amending some of the provisions of the Public Procurement Act, Paudel said the government is working towards that end.
Prior to this, lawmakers expressed their concerns over increased revenue leakage, the shrinking of foreign aid, liquidity in the banking sector, lack of systematisation of the economic system and the growing size of public debt (over Rs 2.6 trillion). They also raised their voices over the lack of capital expenditure by the local and provincial governments, the need of giving priority to projects capable of promoting the national economy and promotion of fiscal discipline.
Dr Amersh Kumar Singh, Devendra Paudel, Rajendra Kumar KC, Abdul Khan, Janardan Sharma, Hitaraj Pandey, Bimala Subedi, Juli Kumari Mahato, Madhav Sapkota, Shakti Bahadur Basnet, Guyanu Basnet Subedi, Prem Suwal, Saraj Ahmad Faruki and Narayan Sharma took part in the discussions.