‘Govt prioritises investment in vaccines against virus’

Kathmandu, July 25

Finance Minister Janardan Sarma said on Sunday that the government investment would be focused on vaccines against the COVID-19 disease since the rehabilitation of the economy fully hinges on the vaccination drive.

“For the immediate moment, vaccination campaign is the government priority so its investment will be in this task. Economic rehabilitation will be expedited with the speedy vaccination drive,” he said in an interaction with the former finance ministers today.

According to him, if the current crisis could be addressed, challenges faced by the economy would also be resolved easily. The government is taking initiative in the same direction and vaccines would be procured even by reallocating the development expenditure, he said.

FM Sharma said that the country should be self-reliant in resource management while it was impossible to be self-reliant in every sector, so the government would make policy provisions to increase the industrial otput.

He reiterated that the government was working to convert the consumer economy to production economy. He maintained that some concrete steps would be taken in terms of development with a decision on the budget of the current Fiscal Year 2021/22 which was presented through an ordinance.

Former FM Surendra Pandey said that the Finance Ministry should make a serious review about the weaknesses of the ministry to know if it had any role in the poor mobilisation of the development budget.

He suggested giving priority to the industry since trading would not create much employment.

Former FM Barsha Man Pun said that the policy of not asking for the source of income in the investment made in the hydroelectricity had resulted in some success in the sector so this policy should also be adopted in manufacturing industry.

Former FM Shankar Prasad Koirala suggested issuing a policy paper with new economic programmes if the government had to go ahead with the budget announced by the previous government.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 26 July 2021.