MoF begins consultations on supplementary budget

REPUBLICA

KATHMANDU, April 3: The Ministry of Finance (MoF) initiated exercises to internalize the draft supplementary budget that a group of political economists submitted on Friday, as the government pushed for early announcement of the fresh budget -- third in a year -- despite oppositions´ disagreement.

The draft prepared by the ministry has numerous populist programs, something which will derail the present budget´s thrust towards nourishing the productive sectors.


The major programs mooted by the politically motivated economists include ones like identification and development of 100 model village development committees (VDCs) across the country, welcoming them to spend as much as Rs 5 million during the year.

Likewise, it proposes income generation programs, allocating as much as Rs 1 billion for distribution to different communities, encouraging them to jump into rickshaw pulling and other self-employment activities.

“Basically, the draft focuses on providing relief to the people from backbreaking commodity prices,” said Dilli Raj Khanal, one of the members of the drafting committee.

It has programs that focus on easy spending of the budget so that money piled up in the national treasury could be spent. “The recurrent budget has not been touched. We have mooted realigning of capital spending only,” Khanal told Republica.

Even though MoF officials did not agree with the spirit of the proposed draft, they said discussions have begun in the ministry for internalizing the recommended programs.

Former Finance Minister Dr Ram Sharan Mahat, meanwhile, blatantly rejected the government´s efforts to come up with distributive budget. “We do not agree with the very idea of supplementary budget at this point of time. We will not endorse it in the parliament,” he stated.

Instead of supplementary budget, Dr Mahat suggested to the government to start wider consultation with all political parties for forming early budget for the next fiscal year.

Even Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Bharat Mohan Adhikari had agreed with this stand earlier. However, he changed his stance after UCPN Maoist, the largest party in the coalition government, continued to push for supplementary budget.