Kathmandu, January 16

The government's capital expenditure continued to be sluggish in the first six months of the current fiscal at 14.05 per cent or Rs 53.455 billion of the total annual allocation of Rs 380.38 billion under the capital budget heading.

According to economist Bhim Bhurtel, development activities have halted as the government officers were focus on the general elections, thereby rsulting in low capital expenditure.

'It's has been a perennial problem of the government - inability to spend capital budget at the beginning of the fiscal and spending a large chunk of the amount at the end of financial year,' Bhurtel said. 'The development activities have been affected as the former government was election-oriented. Moreover, many contractors also put their activities on hold, waiting for the fuel prices to be reduced, which also affected the development expenditure.'

Although the capital expenditure during the first six months of the current fiscal year has improved compared to the corresponding period of the previous fiscal, spending of less than 15 per cent of the capital budget in first half of the year cannot be deemed satisfactory.

The government had spent Rs 50.80 billion or just 13.44 per cent of the targeted Rs 378.09 billion budget allocated for capital expenditure during the first six months of the previous fiscal year, as per the statistics of Financial Comptroller General Office (FCGO).

Meanwhile, in the first six months of this fiscal, 32.13 per cent of the budget has been spent from the government's treasury. According to FCGO, Rs 576 billion out of the total Rs 1.7 trillion budget allocated for the current fiscal year has been spent in the review period.

Similarly, 38.47 per cent of the recurrent expenditure and 29.44 per cent of the financing budget have been spent in the review period. Out of the Rs 1.1 trillion allocated for recurrent expenditure, Rs 455 billion has been spent in this period, while Rs 67 billion of the Rs 230 billion allotted for financing purposes has been spent during the review period.

On the other hand, out of the targeted Rs 1.4 trillion, the total receipts of the government have reached 33.93 per cent or Rs 494 billion.

The total receipts include Rs 459 billion in revenue, four billion rupees in grants and Rs 31 billion in other receipts.

Meanwhile, the government collected 32.72 per cent of the total targeted revenue in the review period.

The government had set a total revenue target of Rs 1.4 trillion and as of January 15, Rs 459 billion has been collected. The revenue includes Rs 405 billion in tax revenue and Rs 53 billion in non-tax revenue.

A version of this article appears in the print on January 17, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.