Details of ministry-wise performance of the capital expenditure till the November-end unearthed by Republica shows that the worst performer among the ministries, interestingly, is the Ministry of Physical Planning and Works (MoPPW), which is entrusted to spend Rs 34.57 billion in capital budget, the largest among ministries.[break]
So far, MoPPW has managed to spend just Rs 1.42 billion, which is a mere 4 percent of the total capital budget allocated to the ministry. Likewise, the Ministry of Irrigation (MoI) that has been allocated the second highest capital budget of Rs 9.15 billion has so far spent just Rs 683 million, which is only around 7 percent of the total capital budget allocated to the ministry.
Performance of the Ministry of Local Development (MoLD) and the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) with allocated capital budget of Rs 7.44 billion and Rs 4.57 billion for this fiscal year has so far spent just Rs 392 million and Rs 244 million respectively.
“Their combined spending is just over 5 percent of the total amount they are supposed to spend this fiscal year,” said a senior MoF official.
The expenditure of captial budget is definitely not satisfactory, said Finance Secretary Krishna Hari Baskota.
However, officials at the ministries concerned said they need to follow a lengthy and tedious process in getting the programs approved by the National Planning Commission. Then, the process to call tenders and select a contractor begins. The entire process is lengthy and complicated and that explains why the development spending is so low despite a timely budget this time around.
“The entire process consumes at least 4 months. And, there is no way we can expedite the things,” said Tulasi Prasad Sitaula, secretary of MoPPW, citing that the low spending was not due to ministries´ laxity but because of the system that they need to follow. “Otherwise, spending on projects that are already into implementation through multi-year contract is good,” he told Republica.
Sources at the MoPPW said the ministry has been slow in spending the capital budget because there are a number of projects whose final designs are not ready as yet and the ministry is clueless as to how to move these proejcts forward.
Apart from that, demand for pre-payment of bribe by ministers and their close aides from contractors before awarding them the work is believed to have created an unprofessional environment in the government circles, affecting the pace of capital spending.
Once the tender process is completed, which officials said will probably happen by the January-end, the spending is likely to jump to 20 percent.
The MoF recently issued a 13-point instruction to different ministries, seeking them to instantly do away with all obstacles in the way of development projects and speed up the spending.
“We have also warned the ministries that we will force them to surrender the budget and pass it on to other better performing projects, if they failed to post a good growth in capital spending by the end of second trimester,” said Baskota.
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