KATHMANDU, Sept 30: Province 3 has announced the establishment of a ‘project bank’ of development projects that have strong rationale and have been assessed through proper selection process.

Thursday’s meeting of Province Policy and Planning Commission has also formed a technical team led by its vice chairman Khim Lal Devkota to chart out parameters for selecting the projects to put into projects. The team will consider different factors like of economic, social, cultural, environmental and institutional factors while selecting projects.

Project selection on the basis of leaders’ whims, without any study and preparatory works, has been the major constraint for project handling till date. Project banking has long been discussed at the central level, however, it has not come into effect yet. The provincial government will be the first to materialize it when the project bank comes into existence.

The meeting has also decided that the next budget and programs of the province will only pick projects from the project bank. Devkota claimed that the concept of project banking will transform the traditional project selection process and will make project execution more practicable. 

Political power and influence of bureaucracy have been the only grounds for project selection till now. The central National Planning Commission has never taken this issue seriously, which has been creating a kind of mess in project selection. Due to the gross mismanagement in projects, allocation of small and medium-scale projects to the local and provincial governments has become a real headache for the central government, which comes as a challenge in implementing federalism.

 
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