KATHMANDU, Jan 8: The Ministry of Finance has formed four committees to improve the budget system. Under the leadership of three under secretaries of the Budget and Program Division, the Ministry has formed committees to provide suggestions on the work to be done to improve the budget system.
Finance Minister Dr Prakash Sharan Mahat announced that the budget system will be reformed while announcing the budget for the current fiscal year. In the 57th point of the budget, it was mentioned that in the next fiscal year, the rationale and needs of the programs and projects will be intensively reviewed and the budget system will be further reformed and restructured.
Officials of the Ministry of Finance said that the ministry has formed various committees to implement the announcement.
A committee has been formed under the coordination of Purna Neupane, the under secretary of the Budget and Program Division, which is responsible for unifying the responsibility of the budget information system and multi-year contracts and resource assurance.
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In previous years, the Ministry of Finance had approved multi-year contracts haphazardly, resulting in a lack of information on the liabilities of these contracts. The committee is responsible for studying the status of implemented programs, future payment obligations, and other related aspects.
Similarly, when the relevant ministry requests a new budget, the Ministry of Finance has been facing problems in managing finances recently, after not requesting a budget for a program that has agreed to a multi-year contract, but asking for a budget for a new plan.
Similarly, the ministry has formed a committee under the leadership of Central Budget Chief Jagdish Upadhyay to study the issue of systematization of fund transfers and disbursements from various sources.
Based on the pressure of the leaders who have access, the committee has been given the responsibility to find and suggest ways to control the disorder of spending the allocated budget in various ways.
Similarly, the ministry has formed a committee under the leadership of Upadhyaya to improve the activities in the Line Ministry Budget Information System (LMBIS).
Currently, the committee has been given the responsibility of submitting suggestions on reducing the number of programs as it is difficult to manage the program when more than 800,000 programs are active in the system.
Similarly, the committee formed under the leadership of the Under Secretary of the Ministry, Tikaram Bhusal, has been given the responsibility of studying the issues related to the improvement and security of LMBIS and Provincial Line Ministry Budget Information System (PLMBIS) and making suggestions on how to interlink with other systems of the government.
All the four committees formed by the decision of the secretary level have been given the responsibility to submit a report with suggestions by mid-Feburary.
Officials of the Ministry of Finance say that the basis of the recommendations given by the committees, the ministry will improve the budget system by creating regulations, procedures and standards.
