Karnali province fails to spend budget

  • Non-implementation of development budget has to do with lack of manpower and expenditure mechanism

Surkhet, October 9

Three months of the current fiscal have already passed, but Karnali Province has failed to spend even a single rupee from the budget allocated for development projects.

The province had set aside a total of  21.24 billion rupees under the heading of capital expenditure for this fiscal, of which only 7.967 million rupees has been spent so far.

Again, the amount spent is not from the development budget, but the budget which was allocated for administrative expenditure.

If the current trend continues and the ministries concerned don’t start preparing necessary infrastructure, it’s very much likely that there will be zero utilisation of the budget allocated for development projects in the first four months of the fiscal.

It is worth noting that the ministries of the province have a target of spending 18 to 28 per cent of the budget in the first four months of this fiscal.

Financial Affairs and Planning Minister Prakash Jwala, on his part, said the problem in the implementation of the development budget had to do with lack of manpower and necessary expenditure mechanism.

“Besides the lack of manpower, we don’t have necessary buildings and offices for the ministries and various offices to operate from, which has created problem in implementation of the budget,” he said.

He also added that there were cases when the ministry concerned had released the budget but the same hadn’t been spent for want of spending procedures.