Ministries told to propose programs for new budget

KATHMANDU, Feb 9: The Prime Minister´s Office (PMO) has circulated a directive to all the ministries, asking them to submit program and policies for the new budget by Thursday.

The new government will present the annual budget and policies and programs for the fiscal year 2010/2011, as the outgoing caretaker government had announced budget without policies and programs through an ordinance.


"The PMO on Monday directed us to submit new programs and policies by Thursday. We are busy working on the same,” a high level source at the Ministry of Physical Planning and Works (MoPPW) told Republica on Tuesday.

The source said the lengthy process in finalizing and implementation of budget is all set to hamper the capital expenditure in coming days. With the change in program and policy, the government has to change its budgetary program as per the policy.

The budget, which has been announced through the ordinance, has to be passed within 60 days of the beginning of the parliament session as per the parliamentary regulation. This means the parliament has to endorse the current budget by the first week of February.

The previous government had announced budget worth Rs 337.90 billion for the fiscal year 2010/11 through ordinance on November 20, giving top priority to fostering industrial climate and reviving the confidence of exporters. The budget was presented by the then caretaker government without announcing policy and programs.

Immediately after the appointment of the new prime minister, the CPN-UML and UCPN (Maoist) had formed an eight-member taskforce to formulate new policies and programs for the current fiscal year. Both parties had also agreed to form another taskforce of economists from both the parties to formulate the budget as per the proposed policies and programs.

Officials at the MoPPW said the changes in policies and programs as well as budgetary programs were all set to hit implementation of the programs and policies at a time when authority to spend the budget in some of the programs has not been delegated due to intervention by the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) and National Vigilance (NVC).

"It is certain that we can´t begin implementation of the upcoming budget soon due to possible delay in budgetary allocation. There will be pressure to spend the budget during the last two months of the fiscal year during when the government can´t spent more than 40 percent of the allocated budget for the programs," said the source.

Bodh Raj Niraula, chief of Budget Division at the Ministry of Finance, opined that the new budget for next fiscal year along with policies and programs of the government should be announced by April targeting to implement the budget from August.

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