March 21: Projects worth Rs 7900 billion have been listed in the National Project Bank. The federal government had formed the project bank to identify and prepare a list of investable projects. So far, 7,219 projects have been registered in the list.

Officials say that the estimated cost of the projects registered in the Project Bank under the National Planning Commission is more than Rs 7900 billion and it will take at least 26 years to complete them based on the current budget system.

Among such projects registered with the National Planning Commission, there are projects including roads, drinking water, bridges, river embankments and airports. In the past, leaders and parliamentarians used to rush to the Ministry of Finance to include the projects in the red book while preparing the budget. The then Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli started the National Project Bank in the year 2076 after the government found it difficult to sustain such schemes without securing source of funding for the projects.

According to Ram Kumar Phuyal, a member of the commission, the concept of project bank was put forward for the development and practice of a system for identifying, selecting, evaluating and prioritizing projects based on facts and standards. According to him, it is believed that this will help to make project management more effective and achieve efficiency in implementation.

It seems challenging for the government to complete these projects from allocating resources to spending the allocated budget. In the past, the government had introduced the concept of national pride projects to prioritize the projects. The government classified 17 projects as projects of national pride for the first time in the fiscal year 2068/69. So far, 24 projects have been listed in the National Pride Project.

Ten years after the government’s announcement of the pride projects, only the 456 MW Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower Project and the Gautam Buddha International Airport have been completed and put into operation while other projects are yet to be completed. Due to delays in construction, the cost of large projects has increased to billions of rupees. The completion of other national pride projects is undertain.

Phuyal said that the concept of National Project Bank was introduced to remove such uncertainty in project implementation.

According to him, the commission has taken initiative to put all the projects at the provincial and local levels in the project bank. He stated, “The work of entering all the projects in the bank is moving ahead.”

After the progresses of both big and small projects were not satisfactory, the government repeatedly conducted studies to find the reason. The report of the expenditure review commission led by Dilliraj Khanal recently pointed out that due to mistakes made from project selection to design, the projects are being delayed and the cost has also increased. According to Khanal, until the dilly-dallying in project selection, design, costing system, working style is not improved, the project cost will continue to increase.

Even now, the government has not been able to spend the development budget allocated in the annual budget. In the current fiscal year, the government has allocated Rs 300 billion for development works, but only Rs 87 billion has been spent as of March 19. In the same period last year, Rs 80 billion had been spent.