Budget in limbo
The Himalayan Times
8 March 2018
Budget
in limbo
Nepal has now entered into the
federal structure after the completion of three tiers of elections. This
situation demands several changes in the bureaucratic and financial management systems
that were in place for several decades. Among them, the assignment of existing
human resources to the three levels of government, appropriation of annual
budget and identification of development programmes and projects to be
implemented by the federal, provincial and local level governments have been herculean
task for the federal government.
The traditional practice of fiscal
budget formulation and presentation to the Parliament by the central government
was normally done towards the end of June of every fiscal year. In the absence
of local level governments for the last almost 20 years, the Districts
Development Committees (DDC) used to be a focal point for incorporating all the
district level sectoral programmes and forward them to the respective central
level ministries which used to compile and forward them to the National
Planning Commission (NPC) and Ministry of Finance (MoF) for finalization.
Most federal ministries seem to
have delayed in handing over their programmes to their respective provincial and
local level governments. Unless these handing over processes are done, the
chances of duplication of district level and federal level programmes thus
swelling the volume of annual budget will remain very high. Also, the annual
budget ceiling to be provided by the NPC to each federal ministries is yet to
take place due to delay in appointment of new NPC vice chair.
Rai
Biren Bangdel
Maharajgunj
