Capital spending less than a third of target

KATHMANDU, April 5: Though capital spending picked up of late, the volume of development budget spent over the first eight-and-a-half months still remained less than a third of what the government has planned to spend this fiscal year.



A figure released by the Ministry of Finance (MoF) on Thursday shows the government has so far spent Rs 22.42 billion capital budget. [break]



“The figure reflects substantive rise in capital spending in recent months. But it is also true the spending stands at less than 31 percent of the annual target,” said finance secretary Krishna Hari Baskota.



The government had allocated Rs 72.61 billion capital budget.



Moreover, data compiled by MoF shows that the spending in development projects funded by foreign aid has remained still dismal. It is less than spending of the government financed development budget, admitted Baskota.



According to the data, concerned project managers have merely spent about Rs 2 billion in donor-funded projects, even as their actual disbursements has already crossed over Rs 14 billion.



“The development spending has remained far dismal than what we had anticipated,” said Baskota, stating that MoF had expected it to remain much higher as the government had managed to announce budget on time and different implementing ministries were delegated authority to spend the budget.



MoF has attributed this to lack of initiatives by implementing agencies and rising tendency of different ministries to seek budget for new programs rather than focusing on executing the existing projects for the low spending of capital budget.



Speaking to media persons, Baskota also disclosed that numerous ministries have continued to place budget demand for a larger number of “not so meaningful” programs even though such a practice goes against the prudent fiscal norms.



Owing to such tendency, Baskota said the ministry and National Planning Commission (NPC) were facing problems in making all other ministries to stick to the budget ceiling for the next fiscal year.



“The budget proposals from numerous ministries exceed well above the ceilings set for them,” said Baskota. MoF and NPC have said the budget for the next fiscal year will total over Rs 429 billion.



Referring to the government´s new development priorities, they have disclosed that the next budget will increase allocations in sectors like roads, irrigation and agriculture.

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