Low capital expenditure riles development partners

KATHMANDU, June 21: The government, Nepal’s development partners and economists have expressed serious concern over the low capital expenditure that is limited to just 25 per cent when 24 days are left for the current fiscal year to come to an end.

Lack of seriousness in implementing the projects and failure to immediately resolve problems seen in the project sites are blamed for the low capital expenditure, as they argued. They further stressed that the bodies concerned should carry out works honestly along with the goal of increasing expenditure in future.

They laid emphasis in implementation of development projects and increasing capital expenditure in a tripartite meeting organized jointly by the Finance Ministry and Asian Development Bank ( ADB) with senior officials of the government, concerned employees and contractors of ADB supported development projects and local office-bearers here today.

Saying the government has set a goal of spending Rs 312 billion capital expenditure in the current fiscal year, only Rs 124 billion was spent till June 20, Secretary at the Ministry of Finance, Shanta Raj Subedi, urged all the bodies concerned to carry out works seriously.

The Finance Secretary said that the target of taking capital expenditure to 85 per cent was limited to paper and requested all the bodies concerned to be alert on time so as to avoid such situation in future.

Secretary Subedi expressed concern for not getting a satisfactory progress on the projects supported by the ADB, World Bank, other development partners and Nepal and added that expected result was not achieved due to the trend of escaping from responsibilities and failure to resolve problems related to projects.

He urged the bodies concerned to report to the concerned Ministries it was found dillydallying in facilitating the implementation of projects, pledging to make immediate efforts to address such adversity. “No one can escape from responsibility”, he said, expressing commitment that the government would help achieve the goals and result.

Similarly, Dibesh Sharan, ADB Deputy Director General for South Asia, said that the ABD has invested 2 billion US dollar in 32 projects of Nepal. He also expressed concern over the implementation of projects at a slow pace and stressed the need of support of all concerned bodies to expedite the projects.

Likewise, Officer-in-Charge, ADB/NRM, Sharad Bhandari said the vision envisaged by the Nepal Government for the implementation of the budget for upcoming fiscal, its improvement and capital increment is encouraging.

Projecting that Nepal’s economic growth in the current fiscal would be around 6.9 percent, he said that it was possible from the post- earthquake reconstruction efforts and end of power outage. RSS