February 17: The government’s property is estimated to be around Rs 200 billion, as per the integrated data collected since the last one and a half years.

The government has given the responsibility finding out its property details to the Financial Comptroller General Office (FCGO), which also keeps the records of the government’s income and expenditure. The FCGO has been giving pressure to all the government bodies to maintain records through electronic medium. As per the instruction of the FCGO, all three tiers of governments have entered the property details in the government’s online system.

According to Deputy Financial Comptroller General Navaraj Dhungana, until one and a half years ago the government did not have the details of public property owned by the three tiers of government since the country adopted the federalism. Therefore, the FCGO started keeping records of the public property in an integrated way and has not been able to make a tentative estimate of the properties owned by the government, said Dhungana. However, most of the government offices have not presented the valuation of property as per the current market price. That is the reason why the government’s property is not as much as it was expected to be, says Dhungana.

As per the data of the FCGO, the combined property of the government bodies included in the Public Property Management System is equal to Rs 180 billion.

According to the FCGO, the Ministry of Home Affairs owns the maximum property among all government bodies. The Home Ministry alone has properties worth Rs 27.74 billion followed by Defense Ministry (Rs 21.92 billion), Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport (Rs 6.2 billion) and Finance Ministry (Rs 4.67 billion). The lowest property recorded so far belongs to the Indigenous Nationalities Commission which is valued at Rs 1.7 million.

As per the available data, the President’s Office has properties worth Rs 187.7 million while the Vice President’s Office is worth Rs 75.7 million. Similarly, the properties of province chiefs’ offices are valued at Rs 112.6 million while the federal parliament has properties worth Rs 44.6 million while the courts’  properties are valued at Rs 3.5 billion across the country.

The records maintained by the FCGO show that the properties of the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority stand at Rs 665.9 million.

In the initial phase, the FCGO has only included the value of the physical infrastructure, vehicles and buildings of government bodies while determining the property of the government. The government’s property calculated at the moment does not include billions of rupees spent on physical infrastructure such as public roads, drinking water pipelines, irrigation channels, bridges among others.

The Finance Committee of the House of Representatives had been issuing directive to the government time and again to keep an integrated record of its properties.