Budget to come on Friday

The caretaker government is bringing full-fledged budget on Friday for the current fiscal year-- four months late than the schedule -- focusing on donor-fuded programmes.
"After the opposition from UCPN-Maoists, finance minister Surendra Pandey backed form his populist programmes," said a source at the ministry.
After a long tug-of-war among the political parties, they have agreed to bring the full-fledged budget with the condition that no new policies would be announced. The donor funded projects and running health, education and infrastructure projects will get continuity as the donors have committed around Rs 100 billion aid in the last fiscal year 2009-10.
The foreign aid contributes to almost half of the development expenses and around 30 per cent to the total budget. "Foreign aid is key to our development expenses as the revenue alone is not even enough for regular expenses," a former finance minister said, adding that the trend, though is not good for the country, there is no alternative.
The government is, apart from revising some tax rates, is planning to bring some relief package for the exporters as the exports have plunged by over six times to imports widening the trade gap.
Subsidy for fertilizer and shallow tube wells for farmers to promote agriculture and some incentives for the exporters are in the finance minister's kitty, according to the source. Agriculture alone contributes to around 32 per cent to the gross domestic product but that largly depends on rain due to lack of proper irrigation facilities.
The full-fledged budget -- that has to be presented by mid-July -- have been stalled by the political deadlock after the surprise resignation of the Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal on June 30 -- just two weeks ago the budget presentation date.
Since then, parliamentarians have voted 16 times to elect a new Prime Minister without being successful as no one has been able to gain a clear majority.
"The 17th vote that is scheduled for Friday could also be deferred till UCPN-Maoists' Plenum ends," said the source.
Meanwhile, Nepali Congress and CPN-UML today issued whips to their lawmakers for compulsory attendance in parliament on Friday during the amendment of the special Provision under Article 96 (A) in the Interim Constitution that will pave the way for full-fledged budget presentation.
The three major political parties -- UCPN-Maoists, Nepali Congress and CPN-UML -- along with other small parties have earlier agreed to present the annual budget in parliament through the caretaker government on November 19 as the UCPN-Maoists will be busy with its Plenum that starts from November 21.
Earlier Pandey has brought special budget of Rs 110.21 billion -- under the special provision for the regular expenses -- that will now be adjusted in the full-fledged budget. The budget will be around Rs 336 billion to Rs 339 billion as the final touches will continue till last hour.