“VDIS was an opportunity we gave the taxpayers to correct their past misdeeds. Now that the scheme has ended, we will start investigating the adamant tax evaders from Sunday,” he said Friday when the scheme ended.
Dr Bhattarai said the tax evaders could be slapped penalties as high as 60 percent of the property involved.
According to the Ministry of Finance, some 2,000 persons legalized undisclosed property worth Rs 4.6 billion and paid Rs 460 million in revenue to the government over the extended VDIS period.
With that, the number of people who took advantage of the program touched 4,000. The scheme brought the government a total revenue of Rs 1.50 billion.
Meanwhile, Dr Bhattarai admitted that the government, despite much commitment, lagged behind in providing relief to the general consumer reeling under steep rises in food and other commodity prices.
“Inflation has remained stubbornly over 14 percent, whereas international price trends suggest it should have come down,” said Dr Bhattarai, and attributed the situation to hoarding and price cartels that do not want to reduce prices even though international food and oil prices have dropped significantly.
While urging the supplies minister to gear up market monitoring and strengthen market intervention to correct the situation, the finance minister also admitted that the government would fail to achieve the projected economic growth rate as well as carry out development spending to the extent envisaged.
Speaking at a function organized to unveil the mid-term review report of the budget for 2008/09, Dr Bhattarai, however, expressed satisfaction over higher revenue mobilization, increased remittance inflow and sound economic indicators.
Going by the report, the government mobilized revenue of Rs 79.06 billion during the first 10 months of the fiscal year, which was above target and a 36.2 percent rise over collection in the same period last year. Likewise, remittance inflow has increased by 65 percent during the first half of the fiscal year, touching Rs 94.6 billion.
“Given the global financial crisis, there was widespread concern that Nepal could lose in remittances and exports. However, we have done excellently on those fronts,” he said.
As for the decline in development spending, which barely crossed Rs 10 billion -- or about16 percent below the spending recorded in the same period last year -- Dr Bhattarai attributed it to delay in the announcement of the budget by two months and also the absence of local bodies. “Delayed budget announcement affected timely release of budget monies. Also, we could not form the local bodies to spend bloc grants disbursed to the VDCs, among others” he said.
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