Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Government spends only 6 per cent of capital expenditure

The government failed to expedite the capital budget expenditure and spent only 6.05 per cent of the total budget – in the first four months of the current fiscal year – despite need of huge cost for the federal structure to sustain.
Of the total Rs 408 billion capital budget for the current fiscal year, the government has spent only Rs 24.71 billion from mid-July to mid-November, according to Financial Comptroller General Office (FCGO).
The government bodies are usually busy devising plans and preparing for developing procurement procedures during the initial days of every fiscal year but decreasing spending capacity of the government, age-old bureaucracy and corrupt governance contributed to the low spending of the capital budget.
In the last fiscal year too, the government failed to spend, as it was able to spend 73.4 per cent of the total development budget. “The low spending in the first trimester will put the government under tremendous pressure this fiscal year too,” according to an official in the Finance Ministry. The last minute spending in the development works means only to meet the spending target but the quality of the work is always under question.
Last year, the government had spent only 35 per cent of the total capital budget of Rs 313.99 billion, while 16.4 per cent of the budget was spent in the last one week alone raising the question of the quality of the work.
The 56th annual report of the FCGO also showed that the government had spent 40 per cent of the total capital budget of Rs 108 billion in the last month of the fiscal year 2017-18. The last month and last week spending is, though financial crime, the two-third majority powerful and stable government of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has failed to boost the spending let alone meet the revenue mobilisation target.
The Constitution mandates a government to bring the budget before one-and-a-half months in advance, which will help approve the budget from the parliament before the fiscal year begins. But the constitutional provision also failed to expedite the capital expenditure.
Though, the finance minister Dr Yuba Raj Khatiwada has been defending the worst performance saying that the government’s focus has been diverted to the other actions, the failure is also attributed to the lack of preparations of the projects before budgeting. The government has brought Rs 1.53 trillion budget for the current fiscal year 2019-20. “Of the total Rs 957 billion recurrent budget, the government has spent 20.57 per cent in the four months of the current fiscal year,” according to the FCGO.

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