January 9: The trend of announcing a massive budget without looking at the capacity of the state has made the country’s economic system unstable. This raises serious questions about the ability of the ruling government and administration to prepare the budget.

The government has not been able to implement the budget effectively due to the practice of forming a government by forging alliances with various parties and announcing a large budget to fulfill the interests of those parties.

The incumbent government is also formed through a coalition of different parties. Taking the minimum common program issued by the government into consideration, Finance Minister Dr Prakash Sharan Mahat announced the budget for the current fiscal year (FY) on May 29. But the government has failed to implement big programmes included in the budget.

For the current year, the government had announced a budget of Rs 1751 billion, but has been able to spend only Rs 355 billion (20 percent) so far. This clearly shows that the budget expenditure is very poor in the first six months of the current fiscal year.

Even though the budget has provisions to scrap unnecessary bodies and to create employment opportunities, they have not been implemented.

The current expenditure has increase significantly due to the delay in scrapping the government bodies that were supposed to be scrapped as per the budget announcement.

Likewise, the unemployment problem in the country is getting worse due to the non-implementation of employment programmes.

On the other hand, projects worth billions of rupees are being run at a snail’s pace, while the contractors have not yet received huge amount of payment that has remained due since last year.

The government had announced a capital budget of Rs 302 billion, but has spent only Rs 29.98 billion so far. From this, it is clear that the pace of development is very slow.

While questions are being raised about the preparation of the budget, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has directed the government officials including the finance minister to make the upcoming budget realistic.

PM Dahal held discussion about the upcoming budget with Finance Minister Dr Mahat, Vice President of the National Planning Commission Dr Min Bahadur Shrestha, Chief Secretary Baikuntha Aryal and other stakeholders.

The prime minister has pointed out the need for a separate discussion on the process of setting the budget ceiling, saying that a comprehensive discussion between the ministries is necessary when setting the ceiling of the budget.

The prime minister has also instructed not to set a budget ceiling haphazardly.

"When setting the ceiling, let's not set it based on speculations. Let's also call the ministries and discuss. Let's listen to them," he said. "This is also a democratic process. We also need a clear plan about which level of planning to keep at the center and which in provinces and local levels.”

The prime minister has also instructed the Ministry of Finance and the National Planning Commission to prepare policies, programmes and budget so as not to add unnecessary plans, give high priority to old plans that have been pending and focus on a specific strategic plan every year.