FM seeks details from secretaries to improve capital spending

Kathmandu, Feb. 1

 As the capital expenditure of the federal government remains very low with just 15 per cent in six-and-a-half months and subnational governments also fail to speed up development work, Finance Minister Janardan Sharma has intensified programmes and activities to find solutions to the stagnant spending.

In the same line, on Tuesday, he directed the secretaries of all ministries to submit clear details of projects that can and cannot mobilse the budget.

Speaking at capital expenditure review meeting organised by the ministry at Singha Durbar, he said that people hold an impression that the government couldn’t send the capital budget.

“Therefore, you must take full responsibility of the project and prepare a list of projects that can mobilise the budget and that can’t,” he said.

He emphasized that the ministries mobilising greater size of capital budget should take initiative to expedite the projects.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development should enhance its role in the present context, he said.

Stating that if one and all ministries and responsible persons work with the assumption of their respective responsibilities, the situation to exert pressure continuously wouldn’t arise, FM Sharma said that putting continuous pressure on the secretaries to force them increase development budget is not a good practice.

A regular pressure to the high government officials won’t send a good message to the public, he said.

According to the statistics of the Financial Comptroller General Office (FCGO), capital expenditure by the end of January 2022 stands at just 14.97 per cent – Rs. 44.23 billion of the total capital allocation Rs. 378.09 billion for the current fiscal year 2021/22.

Recurrent expenditure and financing are at 41.53 per cent and 27.72 per cent, respectively.

However, in the last one month period, capital spending has improved, it was at 9.7 per cent at the end of December.

Following the ratification of the replacement bill by the parliament in September 2021, FM Sharma had said that the government would make efforts to mobilise about 10 per cent of the capital budget each month. However, the chronic failure of poor capital spending has remained the same. 

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 2 February 2022.