February 11: The government has downsized the budget for the current fiscal year following a half-yearly review of the budget.

The incumbent government had announced a budget of Rs 1632.82 billion for the current fiscal year through the replacement bill. Unveiling the half-yearly review report of the budget on Thursday, Finance Minister Janardan Sharma said that the budget has been downsized by Rs 86.54 billion to Rs 1546.28 billion.

The government has been able to spend only Rs 507 billion in the first six months of the current fiscal year out of which capital expenditure stands at 16.39 percent. Minister Sharma informed that the government decided to downsize the budget after realizing that the remaining budget could not be spent within the deadline.

The government has mostly reduced budget allocated for capital expenses targeting development works.

The government had allocated Rs 378 billion for capital expenditure for the current fiscal year, which has now been reduced by Rs 38 billion. Following the review of budget, the capital expenditure now stands at Rs 340 billion.

As of mid-January 2022, the government has been able to spend only Rs 50.8 billion of the budget allocated for capital expenditure.

Minister Sharma claimed that the government will now meet the revised target of budget expenditure. He had earlier claimed that the government will spend  10 percent of capital expenses every month but could not keep his words.

The finance minister said that the poor spending was mainly due to three reasons – inclusion of projects in the budget without securing source of investment, inclusion of programmes under political pressure and finally legal hurdles in spending.

Meanwhile, Finance Secretary Madhu Kumar Marasini claimed that the budget expenditure will increase towards to end of the fiscal year.

Although the government has reduced the size of budget, it has not changed its target for revenue collection. The government aims to collect revenue of Rs 11.8 billion in the current fiscal year.