Govt to form committee to supervise development projects

Kathmandu, Jan. 31: Amidst growing criticism of the government for its inability to  spend the development budget, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara has directed all the ministries to hold a meeting of the chiefs of departments and projects under them and address the bottlenecks in mobilising the capital.

 “Hold a meeting of projects chiefs within a week and find out the problems. Ask them why they were unable to spend the budget allocated for the projects, and issue orders for suggestions,” he said at a meeting of the ministries at Singha Durbar on Tuesday.

DPM Mahara said that the government was working on forming a monitoring team that includes high government officials from the Finance Ministry, National Planning Commission (NPC) and Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers (OPMCM), to supervise the implementation and progress of the development projects.

At the end of the first six months of the current fiscal year 2016/17, the government could only spend only 11.30 per cent of its development budget, or Rs. 311.94 billion.

Altogether 26.19 per cent, or Rs. 274.68 billion of the total budget, has been utilised so far.

However, when compared to the statistics of the previous year, there has been a little progress this year.

Last fiscal year, only 7.18 per cent of the capital budget was spent.

But that was the year when the country was undergoing a severe crisis due to the devastating earthquakes and the Indian blockade.

The progress of the national pride projects is 13 per cent so far with the Pokhara Regional Airport, South Asia Tourism Infrastructure Development Project and the Second International Airport at Nijgadh unable to spend a penny.

Among the national pride projects, Rani Jamara Kulariya Irrigation Project and Pushpa Lal Highway have emerged as the best executed projects in terms of development budget expenditure, with 58.28 per cent and 45.26 per cent utilisation of budget in the past six months.

Likewise, 47 per cent of the budget of the Dharan-Chatara-Hetauda road has been spent.

Ministry-wise, the Ministry of Health, Irrigation, and Physical Infrastructure have used 20.60 per cent, 19.08 per cent and 18.45 per cent respectively.

The Ministry of Energy, and Youth and Sport have the poorest performance with 3.82 and 3.62 per cent capital expenditure respectively.

Although the then Finance Minister Bishnu Paudel had presented the budget for the current fiscal year in the parliament about one and a half months earlier than the normal date, the ministries wasted those 45 days doing nothing, and budget authorisation started only from mid-August as in the previous years.

Likewise, the budget execution year, FY 2014/15, announced by then Finance Minister Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat also failed miserably.

Vice-chairman of the NPC Dr. Min Bahadur Shrestha urged the ministries to increase budget spending in order to ease the liquidity crisis.

“Inability to spend development budget amounts to cheating the people,” he said.

 Capital expenditure status (Rs. in thousand)

Ministry	Capital Budget	Expenditure	Exp. %
Energy	8,153,789	311,320	3.82
Agricultural Development	3,822,691	400,827	10.49
Tourism	1,532,317	112,718	7.36
Physical Infrastructure	72,675,970	13,405,842	18.45
Urban Development	19,049,803	1,631,036	8.56
Peace and Reconstruction	2,074,923	207,553	10.00
Industry	3,831,748	256,886	6.70
Water Supply	70,751,913	3,538,742	17.05
Livestock	1,963,046	120,687	6.23
Youth and Sports	197,936	7,165	3.62
Forest and Soil	5,137,699	773,813	15.06
Education	226,451	26,230	11.58
Irrigation	23,019,277	4,391,394	19.08
Local Development	27,903,442	5,072,610	18.18
Health	5,355,440	1,103,011	20.60

Source: Ministry of Finance