Five metropolis announce Rs 37.68 billion budget

Five out of the six metropolitan cities in the country announced a budget of Rs 37.68 billion for the next fiscal year 2021-22, as Lalitpur failed to being the budget due to dispute.

The federal and provincial governments, according to the Constitutions and Fiscal Transfer Act have already brought the budget for the next fiscal year. According to the Fiscal Transfer Act, the local governments must bring the budget by Asar 10 (June 24), and most of the local governments, of the total 753 brought the budget by today.

Kathmandu metropolitan city has the largest budget of Rs 18.95 billion and Birgunj has the smallest one of Rs 3.55 billion for the next fiscal year, among the five that brought the budget today. The Biratnagar Metropolitan City has brought Rs 4.10 billion budget, of which it has allocated some 89 per cent to Rs 3.58 billion under capital heading.

Likewise, Pokhara has brought a budget of Rs 6.27 billion, of which it has allocated some 53 per cent for the capital expenditure. Bharatpur has brought a budget of Rs 4.81 billion for the next fiscal year. After the five years also, the local governments are largely dependent on grants from the federal governments and the provinces.

The Lalitpur metropolis has failed to bring budget due to internal dispute, though there is no opposition in the local level, there has been a lots of politics among them hindering the development activities. They have neither increased their capacity to spend capital budget nor the resource mobilisation to their full capacity. Rather they have been indulged in financial irregularities, and follow the bad practices of the federal government.

Almost all the Metropolitan cities have claimed to have primarily focused the budget in vaccination against coronavirus and other measures to combat the Covid-19 spread.