Kathmandu, March 19

Even as eight months of the fiscal year have already passed, the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport (MoPIT) has been able to spend only 38 per cent of the budget it has been allocated. The ministry has been unable to spend its budget properly as it has not been able to call for tenders of various projects in a timely manner.

The ministry has said that it will accelerate its budget spending to 60 per cent by the end of this month.

Minister for Physical Infrastructure and Transport Raghubir Mahaseth, has said that the ministry has planned to increase its expenditure on various roads, bridges, railways and other transport related projects to 80 per cent by the end of the current fiscal year.

Mahaseth claimed that the ministry has been facing problems of late from the provincial and local governments as they have returned some of the projects that the central government had handed over to them.

“We had transferred 72,000 projects to the provincial and local governments earlier, but now they are saying that they are unable to handle the projects due to lack of proper manpower and budget.”

Releasing the one-year progress report today, Minister Mahaseth, said that the federal governance system has created some difficulties when it comes to taking ownership of various projects. At present, over 72,000 road projects are in limbo across the country as their construction has not moved ahead for the last seven months due to lack of coordination between the central, provincial and local governments. These projects are being built under the multi-year contract model, meaning works have been contracted out for a period of more than a year.

“The construction process is being delayed because local level governments have returned various projects and it needs the approval of the Cabinet to restart the projects as per the previous terms,”Mahaseth clarified.

At present, all the aforementioned road projects have been completely halted. “We are holding discussions with the Ministry of Finance to provide further budget and the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration to resolve these problems.”

According to MoPIT, it has already built 98 bridges till date in the current fiscal year. It has plans to build 300 bridges across the country in the next fiscal year.