KATHMANDU, July 2: The government spent Rs 15.42 billion in the past two weeks while speeding up the expenditure allocated for development projects with the arriving end of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024/25.
As of 11 months, the government had utilized only Rs 144.48 billion (41.01 percent) out of capital expenditure worth Rs 352.35 billion allocated for the current FY. With the start of the last month of the FY 2024/25, the government took the total expenditure under the heading to Rs 159.92 billion, while exhausting more than four percent of the allocated amount in just 15 days, according to the Financial Comptroller General Office (FCGO).
It has been a perennial problem of the government almost every year to work at snail pace on the development projects even by the end of the third quarter. As of mid-April this year, the development expenditure stood at only 29 percent. As in the past, the construction works have been given pace only in the last hour in the current FY too.
Manju Neupane, a resident of Chabahil, Kathmandu, said commuters face massive problems in movement through the roadside as the road maintenance works are mostly done with the onset of the rainy season. “There are hardly any road segments in the capital which are not excavated after the start of monsoon season,” Neupane told Republica.
Lending slows as banks focus on recovery of loans at fiscal yea...
The records with the FCGO show that Rs 50 billion was spent between mid-June and mid-July in FY 2023/24. This amount was more than 27 percent of the total amount spent under the heading.
In FY 2022/23, a budget of 17.28 percent was spent just in the last month. The annual report of the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) shows Rs 245.67 billion was spent during mid-June to mid-July while Rs 88.66 billion was spent in the last week alone.
According to Uttar Kumar Khatri, joint-secretary of the Ministry of Finance, the last hour expenditure amount balloons as the payments for completed work are typically processed towards the end of the fiscal year. He added that delayed payments are also settled mostly during this period.
The practice of carrying out development works in the last hour is mostly driven by a temptation to meet deadlines and spend allocated budgets before the end of the FY. This mostly results in substandard work along with creating inconvenience to the travelers while posing safety risks due to poor road conditions.
Over the past decade, the government has been barely spending less than 70 percent of the allocated budget for development projects. In the last FY, the utilization of capital expenditure stood at around 61 percent of the allocated amount.
Meanwhile, the government spent a total of Rs 91 billion in the past two weeks. Of the amount, Rs 54.72 billion was spent under the recurrent expenditure.
The Financial Procedure and Fiscal Responsibility Act-2020 has barred the government bodies from making withdrawals and expenses one week before the end of the FY. However, it is barely being done in practice.