March 26: The National Planning Commission (NPC) has prohibited the government from including random plans in the budget.

While the government is doing its homework to issue the budget for the upcoming fiscal year, the NPC has had made it clear that the projects that are not included in the National Project Bank will not be included in the budget.

In the past, the budget implementation used to be affected due to due to pressure and influence from the ward chairmen to the parliament to include projects of vested interests in the budget.

This time, the National Planning Commission has taken strict measures to eliminate the past practice of haphazard planning. After realizing that the inclusion of small and petty plans in the budget without proper study caused problems in implementation of such plans every year, the National Planning Commission issued guidelines and frameworks for the upcoming budget and has made strict provisions not to include such plans in the budget.

As per the Financial Procedures and Financial Responsibility Regulations, the NPC has asked all central agencies to send details of the annual budget and program and medium-term expenditure structure only by entering the details of the project in the National Project Bank by themselves or through their subordinate offices or projects.

There is a clear provision in the guidelines that no budget can be allocated for projects that are not included in the National Project Bank. From now onwards, the government officials who are engaged in the preparation of the budget will not be allowed to allocate the budget for the plans that have not been entered in the National Project Bank.

Dhaniram Sharma, joint secretary of the Ministry of Finance, said that the new guidelines have discouraged the practice of randomly recommending plans in the budget.

For programs and projects that are implemented with the cooperation and coordination of more than one federal ministry or agency, the National Planning Commission has made guidelines so that the programs can only be proposed through coordination and cooperation of all related agencies. Ministries will have to propose budgets by prioritizing programs and projects that can be completed within the first quarter of the year.

The NPC has asked the ministries to be realistic on the annual plan and to propose the budget so that there is no need to revise the program in the middle of the year.