Friday, April 12, 2019

Government spent Rs 222.83b in last one month of fiscal 2017-18

The government’s habit of spending hefty sum on the last month of the fiscal year continued in he last fiscal year too. In the last month of the fiscal year 2017-18, the government agencies spent Rs 222.83 billion.
According to the report of the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) published today, the government agencies spent 20.55 per cent of the total budget of Rs 1.27 trillion for the fiscal year 2017-18. "The government agencies sped up their expenditure in the last week of 2017-18, spending 10.87 per cent of the total capital budget of Rs 117.92 billion for the fiscal year."
"Lack of effective implementation of the electronic procurement system, delays in awarding contracts and low capacity of the contractors hit the spending capacity as earlier years,” according to the report, that also revealed that low utilisation of foreign assistance, lack of proper planning for construction of national pride projects and awarding contracts without conducting the necessary preparation were also some of the key problems of the government machinery.
Earlier, it was said that the late budget presentation has hit the spending, so the Constitution has clearly stated to present the budget one-and-a-half months ago by May-end. The Finance Ministry has also issued time-bound action plan to speed up the capital spending.
Likewise, the government has also been unable to settle the tax dues. "The tax dues has reached Rs 252 billion, with an additional Rs 900 million due in the first nine months of the current fiscal year," the report revealed, adding that as of fiscal year 2017-18, the government was left to collect tax of worth Rs 161 billion. The government has been unable to monitor extended tax bases and tax mobilization mechanism," it added.

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