No Supplementary budget now: Dr. Khatiwada

Kathmandu, Sept. 18: The Ministry of Finance has negated the possibility of supplementary budget.

"The government announces the supplementary budget in two conditions – to make additional expenditure when it collects revenue higher than estimate, and to finance special projects. We don’t have both the situations," Finance Minister Dr Yuba Raj Khatiwada said at a press meet organised at the Ministry on Tuesday.

“It is too early to talk about the additional budget at the time when it has been just two months since the new fiscal year began. Before the mid-term assessment of the current budget, we don’t know whether we needed extra money to finance a programme or project,” he said.

His statement came as a response to the media reports that the government was likely to consider to bring about the supplementary budget to announce the increment in the welfare allowance of the senior citizens as promised in the joint election manifesto of the erstwhile coalition partners—the CPN-UML and the CPN-MC.

Chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda while talking to journalists before embarking on his India visit last week, had said that the government was likely to introduce a supplementary budget to adjust the welfare allowance.

However, the Finance Ministry had already said that the government had addressed the demand through health insurance and other programmes and the cash grant would be increased in the following years.

“There has been no discussion about the supplementary budget,” said the Minister.

While preparing of the income and expenditure for the current fiscal, Finance Minister Dr. Khatiwada was not on the mood to make a distributary budget. He had indicated towards increasing the capital formation and national savings and initiating large infrastructure projects.

“There has been a major breakthrough in the large infrastructure projects such as   hydroelectricity, east-west railway and roads. The ministry will announce the details of those projects within a month,” he said.

He said that the government had almost finalised the financing deal for those projects with the donor agencies, including the World Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

According to Dr. Khatiwada, creation and amendment to the laws directly or indirectly related to creating better business environment in the country are in the priority, and the government is serious towards facilitating the investors and businessmen.

“But the businesses must be run as per the law. The government will facilitate the investors and businesspersons with the establishment of the one-door system very soon,” he said.

In the first two months of the current fiscal year, the government has mobilised Rs. 120 billion in revenue and 103 billion in expenditure.

The revenue went up by about 37 per cent as compared to the same period of the last fiscal.

However, the capital budget spending is as low as Rs. 6 billion although it is higher than the previous year.

“This capital spending is made by the multi-year projects. New projects are in the process of contract. So the capital spending will be improved after a couple of months,” said Rajan Khanal, Finance Secretary.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 19 September 2018.