Kathmandu, October 14

Despite the government’s commitment to expedite capital expenditure from the beginning of fiscal 2019-20, it has managed to spend merely 4.34 per cent of the development budget allocated for this fiscal in the first three months of the ongoing fiscal year.

As per the statistics of the Financial Comptroller General Office, the government could manage to spend only Rs 17.7 billion till mid-October out of the Rs 408 billion allocated under capital expenditure for the current fiscal.

The government had been able to spend only 75 per cent of the allocated development budget in the last fiscal. However, the government had defended the tepid spending in the previous year stating that

it was busy forming necessary regulatory frameworks and had vowed to improve development budget spending in the current fiscal.

However, the FCGO’s statistics prove that government spending remains lethargic and development works across the country have not been expedited.

Experts have suggested that the government should spend the budget with proper planning from the initial months of the fiscal year. “Project planning, its execution and implementation of projects should be closely monitored to boost capital spending,” said Biswo Poudel, an economist.

Citing that the government should end the tendency of spending a major portion of its budget at the end of the financial year, Poudel urged the government to work on raising the capacity of both bureaucrats and contractors to increase budget spending.

Experts added that budget spending of the government was not going to improve unless it brought out and implemented a proper budget execution plan.

Meanwhile, the government’s total budget spending, including capital, financing and recurrent expenditure, during the

period stood at 11.04  per cent of the total budget of Rs 1.53 trillion for the ongoing fiscal.

The government has spent Rs 149 billion (15.62 per cent) as recurrent expenditure of the total allocated Rs 957 billion during the review period.

Recurrent expenditure is primarily the spending of the government on non-capital formation

programmes, such as salaries of government staffers, social security and other expenses.

The government has been able to spend Rs 2.14  billion (1.28 per cent) on financing till mid-October out of the total allocated budget of Rs 167.8 billion for the ongoing fiscal.

The government has been able to collect 16.43 per cent or Rs 182 billion revenue in the review period of the Rs 1.1 trillion revenue collection target set for this fiscal year.