Finance Minister urges donors to reimburse

Finance minister Surendra Pandey urged the donors to reimburse the government its expenses of the projects that were completed under grants.
"It will hurt the Balance of Payment (BoP), if the donors won't reimburse the government on time," he said addressing Nepal Portfolio Performance Review 2010 meeting here in the valley today.
The government is yet to get a reimbursement worth Rs 33.11 billion that the government had funded from its resources from donors who had pledged some grant assistance. As per the standard procedures, the government in most cases, makes expenses from its own resources for the execution of agreed projects and later claims reimbursements from concerned donor agencies.
"These meeting will help revise what worked and what not," Pandey said, adding that it would help increase development aid's effectiveness and ensure time-bound implementations," he said, adding that government need more consultancies to further enhance capacity of government employees.
Similarly, National Planning Commission (NPC) vice-chairman Dr Jagdish Chandra Pokharel urged the donor communities to compare performances of government-funded projects and donor-funded projects.
"Some of the government-funded projects have been completed efficiently on time unlike the popular perception," he said.
The donor community on the other hand said that the political instability and bickering have hurt the development efforts. They also urged the government for more dialogue as there has been more political pressures during the procurement process. "Lack of local bodies has also hurt," said Susan Sanyahumbi, head of the Dfid Nepal. "There is no focus on development," she complained.
Similarly, Susan Goldmark country representative of World Bank in Nepal said that the capacity building of government staff is key to development.
However, delay in Budget approval by the the parliament has hurt the development efforts of the country, opined finance secretary Rameshwor Khanal. "Delay in dispatch of expenditure authorisation with approved programmes by line ministries, low disbursement of foreign loans and grant, absence of elected office-bearers in local bodies, reimbursement backlog building, obstacles by local people and ineffective monitoring are some of the hinderances," he added.
Similarly, NPC member Prof Dr Pushkar Bajracharya presented the assesment of Three Year Interim Plan (TYIP). He highlighted positive trend in revenue mobilisation, poverty reduction to 25.4 per cent against the target of 24 per cent, contribution of agricultural and non-agricultural sector in GDP that has changed from 35.3 per cent and 64.7 per cent to 33.5 per cent and 66.5 per cent respectively.
But less than desired achievements in financial and macro economic sectors, structural reform and development initiatives not oriented towards increasing rural income, persistence of large scale poverty particularly in regions and among communities, less effective employment and income generating activities in the rural sector, inadequate infrastructure development to promote regional balance, high and broad based growth not attained and income distribution not equitable are some of the hinderances to the development efforts.
The donor agencies have been funding Nepal for better education, health road-network and administrative reforms.
The government has been holding meetings with the donor agencies to review progress and effectiveness of the foreign assistance. The overall progress of NPPR-2009 plan implementation has been satisfactory. Out of the fourteen key actions, eight actionss have been complied, five actions are under process and only one is due, the last year's review said.
The two-day long meeting will chart out some of the action plans like Human Resource Management and Procurement Management for the coming days.