Government’s appeal to resolve structural problems facing nation’s economy

KATHMANDU, March 30: The government has appealed to all sides to extend assistance to prop up the country’s economy, which witnessed tottering structural problems for long.

Informing about the white paper the Ministry issued on country’s current economic status, Finance Minister Dr Yubaraj Khatiwada said the government had expected assistance because only government efforts were not sufficient to boost the economy.

He said, “Only one agency or level cannot solve the structural problems the country’s economy faced for long. So, this challenge can be coped up with the cooperation among all responsible agencies, corporations, officials and general public.”

With the conduct of three-tier elections in course of the implementation of the constitution and the subsequent formation of governments in all three levels, development and good governance have initiated, he said, adding that the road to prosperity could be constructed with the joint efforts of government, private and cooperatives.

According to him, internal sources and any agency cannot work for the country’s progress. The national and international goals could be achieved by mobilizing the foreign investment and assistance.

He however said there were many opportunities despite such challenges. As the country will have five-year stable government with farsightedness and resolution, the change in policy and priorities every year will stop now onwards, the Finance Minister argued.

Stating that the people have stood for peace and development now, the Finance Minister said, “The government is assured to mobilize necessary means and resources in the journey to economic prosperity.”

He also said that the economy of the country in the time of formation of the new government was highly challenging and added capital mobilization from the financial sector is not directly linked to economic growth and the task of capital formation is slow while the quality of services from the state level is poor.

“The state treasury is almost empty due to violation of budget discipline,” the Finance Minister said.

Likewise, the administrative budget for the implementation of the federalism has increased while the environment for investment is not encouraging, he added.

According to Minister Dr Khatiwada, small economy, minimum bases for investment, insufficient revenue to manage the recurrent expenditure and low economic growth rate were the major problems.

He also said that poor infrastructure, poor private sector, traditional banking services, shrinking status of capital market, limited insurance were other problems in the economy and the export has further shrunk while our economy was import-oriented and the growth rate of remittance inflow has slowed.

Public expenditure has gone up, financial anarchy has risen, questions were raised on credibility of budget and state’s expenditure on pension and retirement sectors have increased, the Finance Minister said.

Minister Khatiwada added that the revenue system was not progressive and result-oriented while the tax system was import-based.

Likewise, he said that anomalies were rife in the sector of foreign assistance. RSS