KATHMANDU, Jan 23: Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has issued a 16-point directive to ensure that the budget preparation for the next fiscal year is people-oriented and implementable.
The PM issued the directive to the government employees during a meeting held at the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers on Tuesday afternoon to discuss next year's policy, program, and budget.
On the occasion, Prime Minister Dahal instructed the government officials to finalize the budget ceiling after estimating the resources for the next year and the subsequent three years.
The PM’s directive mentions that the National Planning Commission (NPC) and the Ministry of Finance should hold discussions with all the ministries by February 3 before finalizing the ceiling of the budget. Prime Minister Dahal has also asked to hold a group discussion with all the ministries/agencies within February 8 after the completion of the ministry/agency discussions and make a schedule to discuss the national priorities and the state of national resources.
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The PM’s instructions include allocation of the budget for new programs and plans only after ensuring that the ongoing projects are completed. He emphasized allocating the budget according to the approved procurement master plan for national pride projects.
PM Dahal also directed government officials to allocate budget only for projects and programs that have received multi-year resource assurance, completed preparations, entered the project bank, and yielded returns. He also issued instructions to end the practice of ministries sending conditional grants to provincial and local levels in the middle of the fiscal year.
PM Dahal has also instructed to stop the tendency of the ministries to send conditional grants to the provincial and local levels in the middle of the fiscal year by keeping the budget with the ministries for the projects and programs implemented by the provincial and local levels.
The prime minister has also directed not to keep programs and projects at the federal level that are contrary to the project classification criteria.
The prime minister also instructed to keep the budget ceilings of the ministries/organizations in the schedule when presenting the principles and priorities of the budget in the parliament and to prepare the budget by incorporating the topics raised in the parliament and the suggestions given by the general public on the principles and priorities of the budget.
PM Dahal’s directive also emphasized restructuring the revenue system, focusing on building a system to increase production and productivity, expanding the scope of revenue, maintaining customs revenue of raw materials lower than that of finished goods, and making changes to the tax structure.
PM Dahal instructed the Ministry of Finance to adopt austerity measures in recurrent expenses, increase development expenses, use external and internal loans only for development expenses. He highlighted the importance of allocating the budget for the productive sector. He also took time to stress on the need to use technical manpower and the need to prioritize agriculture along with integrating subsidies, and implementing a production-based subsidy system.
Additionally, Prime Minister Dahal instructed government officials to emphasize industrialization and to ensure private sector’s involvement in government’s programs.
Furthermore, the prime minister directed to ensure that once a procedure/guideline is established for a program or project, there is no need to recreate it every year.
