The Ministry of Finance (MoF) has prepared a list of such projects that are in need of special government attention. [break]
“We are giving special attention to around 60 projects, including 21 national pride projects, that have reported slow performance despite having huge budgetary allocation,” Ram Saran Pudasaini, joint secretary at the Ministry of Finance (MoF), told Republica on Sunday.
In the current fiscal year, the government has set aside Rs 85.09 billion for capital expenditure that is mainly for development projects.
With the speedy approval of the projects, the government officials are hopeful that they will achieve higher work progress in implementation of development projects compared to past years when most of the projects were approved only in later months. Last year, the government achieved only 81 percent progress in capital spending.
Of the around 200 projects with budget worth over Rs 150 million each, the MoF has selected 60 projects to speed up their implementation as emphasized in the budget.
“Besides giving special focus to these projects, we are soon introducing online monitoring of most of the programs announced in the budget so as to get updated information about the project and make officials concerned more responsible on budget spending,” said Pudasaini.
Under the online monitoring system, each ministry will be linked to the online networks of the finance ministry and the National Planning Commission (NPC).
“We are at final stage of completing installation of software to monitor the implement of budget programs with special focus on major projects worth over Rs 150 million each,” said Pudasaini.
According to Pudasaini, projects like Ranijamara irrigation project, Muglin-Narayanghat road project, Sunsari-Morang irrigation project and other projects on postal roads, energy, poverty alleviation, tourism infrastructures, science and technology, electronic documentation of land ownership records, and informal education have been kept in the list.
“We want to identify the root cause of the problems seen in implementation of projects through monitoring so that we can correct mistakes and make measures to do way with such problems in coming years,” added Pudasaini, who heads the Monitoring and Evaluation Division of the MoF.
Box Approval of priority projects delayed
Meanwhile, the government has approved over 90 percent of the projects announced in the current budget.
“We have approved around 90 percent of the projects so far. Additional 6 percent of the projects are in the process of getting approval from NPC soon,” said Pudasaini.
Most of the projects yet to be approved by the government fall under the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport (MoPIT), Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) and Ministry of Irrigation (MoI).
“We are awaiting project details from the concerned ministries for approval of the projects. Hopefully we will complete the approval process soon and will focus on implementation progress in the coming days,” said Pudasaini.
Besides online monitoring, the government has set up a mechanism to monitor project implementation every two months at the meeting to be chaired by the Finance Minister.
The government is implementing a total of 647 projects of which 453 are P1 projects, 173 are P2 projects and 21 are P3 projects.
P1 projects have to be approved by NPC while other projects can be endorsed by concerned ministries.
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