Kathmandu, May 14
With just two months left for the fiscal year to end, the government has managed to spend merely 27.97 per cent of the allocated capital budget.
As per the statistics maintained by the Financial Comptroller General Office (FCGO), capital expenditure in the first 10 months of fiscal year 2019-20 stands at Rs 114.1 billion or 27.97 per cent of Rs 408 billion allotted as capital budget for this fiscal year.
As a result of the government’s failure to expedite project works and development activities in the initial months of the current fiscal year and also as development activities have halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic in recent months, the capital budget spending during this fiscal year has been very low, as per economists.
“The government could not break the tradition of wise capital budget spending from the beginning months of the fiscal year and waited to spend them in the third quarter of the fiscal year like in previous years. However, all the development activities have been affected in the third quarter of this fiscal which halted development works and the spending of allocated development budget,” said Kushum Shakya, head of the Central Department of Economics at Tribhuvan University (TU).
As the country is under a lockdown and development and construction activities have been completely affected, Shakya opined that the government will miss its development budget spending target significantly this year.
As a result of slow pace of development activities in the initial months and the coronavirus pandemic in the later months of this fiscal year, the government’s development expenditure is likely to be even lower compared to the development budget that was spent in fiscal 2014-15 when the country witnessed a devastating earthquake and in 2015-16 due to supply disruption in the southern border.
The government was able to spend 70 per cent of the total earmarked capital budget in fiscal year 2014-15 and 56.3 per cent of the allocated capital budget in fiscal 2015-16.
Shakya suggested the government to focus on budget implementation and project works from the starting months of next fiscal year to improve the development budget spending. “As the government has said it will focus on existing mega projects for the next fiscal year over new projects, the capital budget spending in the next fiscal year is likely to be high at the end of the year,” she said. “However, the government should ensure that allocated development budget is spent from the beginning months of the next fiscal year itself.”
Meanwhile, the government has been able to spend 59.78 per cent of Rs 957.1 billion recurrent budget allocated for fiscal 2019-20 in the first 10 months, while 44.23 per cent of Rs 167.8 billion allocated under financing has been spent so far.
A version of this article appears in e-paper on May 15, 2020, of The Himalayan Times.
Kathmandu, January 15 Seen in the pictures below are youth activists affiliated to the main opposition Nepali Congress taking part in a tug of war during a protest against the dissolution of House, in Kathmandu, on Friday. On December 20, PM Oli recommended the dissolution of House of Represen Read More...
KATHMANDU: The sixth meeting of Nepal-India Joint Commission was held in New Delhi, India on Friday. Nepal's foreign minister and his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs of India, co-chaired the meet as leaders of their respective delegations today. In a pr Read More...
BRISBANE: T Natarajan's fairytale trip to Australia continued on Friday when the left-arm quick, who arrived as a net bowler, became the first Indian player to make his international debut in all three formats during the same tour. Known for his pinpoint yorkers, which troubled batsmen in the Ind Read More...
KATHMANDU, JANUARY 15 The constitutional bench of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher JB Rana today ruled that cases field against the dissolution of the House of Representatives would be heard by the same bench continuously from Sunday. The SC passed the order after hear Read More...
MAMUJU, INDONESIA: A strong, shallow earthquake shook Indonesia's Sulawesi island just after midnight Friday, toppling homes and buildings, triggering landslides and killing at least 42 people. More than 600 people were injured by the magnitude 6.2 quake, which sent people fleeing their homes in Read More...
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE: President-elect Joe Biden pledged Friday to boost supplies of coronavirus vaccine and set up new vaccination sites to meet his goal of 100 million shots in 100 days. It's part of a broader COVID strategy that also seeks to straighten out snags in testing and ensure minority com Read More...
KATHMANDU, JANUARY 15 Nepal Communist Party (NCP) led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Madhav Kumar Nepal today decided to seek clarification from Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli for acting against the party’s objectives, goals, programmes, and statute. NCP Standing Committee member Bhim Bahadur Rawal Read More...
All-time record scorer for England and Manchester United. A haul of 16 trophies. Wayne Rooney's illustrious playing career is over. Former England and United captain has decided it's time to focus on trying to replicate his successes as a striker in management. After taking temporary charg Read More...