Kathmandu, August 28 :

A recent letter sent by the office of prime minister to all secretaries of ministries, excluding the ministry of finance (MoF), has stated that they are not allowed to carry out any resource generation activities or increase/decrease budget to boost performance without the permission of the MoF, says a source at the ministry of industry, commerce and supplies (MoICS).

The MoF has formulated a mandatory working manual for all ministries as per the allocation of budget for the fiscal year 2006-07, although the ministries do not possess any autonomous power for being self-reliant, according to MoF officials. The working matrix prepared by MoF states that every ministry has to work and submit appraisal reports to the MoF on a monthly basis.

Strangely, despite the working manual being mandatory, there is no clause in the employees’ rules and regulations for taking any legal action against civil servants. However, if a ministry fails to perform as per the expectations and criteria set by MoF, MoF may stop releasing funds to the ministry, says the ministry official.

Krishna Hari Baskota, joint secretary and chief at budget making division at the MoF, said that budget implementation has already started by respective ministries. While implementing the budget, MoF has developed a matrix by which appraisal of ministries and local bodies would be done to see their performance, said Baskota.

He said that there is a provision for meeting every month to monitor the implementation of

budget and announce programmes and policies. Similarly, every two months, a review meeting is to be held. Some officials at the ministry of finance, expressed serious concerns to The Himalayan Times that bad performers and people who are involved in irregularities are still holding influential positions in different ministries.

The local development ministry has already released Rs 500,000 to local bodies, which is one of the significant jobs that the ministry does. However, for releasing the next Rs 500,000 as per the budget announcement, all local bodies have to submit working manuals within two weeks as of today to the MoF, as per the new provision.

Similarly, all the 18 ministries have been given time bound programmes to expedite service delivery mechanisms.