As the government struggles to expedite capital expenditure and meet the revenue target, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on Tuesday instructed the government secretaries to put all their efforts into achieving the revenue target as well as improving development expenditure. The Prime Minister, who has been meeting secretaries of various ministries since Monday, gave 30-point instructions to them on Tuesday. Dahal, who has inherited a weak economy, directed secretaries to be sensitive to the fact that the revenue is not rising as per the target and capital expenditure is weak as the end of the sixth month of the fiscal year approaches. The federal budget has set a target of Rs 1,403 billion in revenue collection for this fiscal. However, after five and half months, around a quarter of the annual target ( 25.1 percent) has been collected. Given the current state of the revenue collection, it will become difficult for the government to raise the expenditure for daily administration and development expenses.

The government has spent only 27.82 percent of the budget in the first five months. According to the Financial Comptroller General Office (FCGO), the government’s spending stood at Rs 499 billion till December-end. As per the FCGO data, the government’s capital expenditure has remained dismal. The government has utilized only 11 percent of the total capital expenditure in the first five and half months. Meanwhile, capital expenditure till December-end stood at Rs 42.45 billion.

"There are some reasons for the decrease in revenue, such as economic recession, and decrease in imports. However, income tax has not been raised as per the target. "What's more, the fact that we have to wait in long queues to pay the monthly taxes shows the level of our service delivery," said Dahal. In his direction, PM Dahal asked the secretaries to think about the slow capital expenditure and urged them to bring proposals if there are any problems at the policy level. "The government's development expenditure is only 11 percent. What are the reasons for not being able to spend on development? Who is responsible? If the cause of slow development expenditure is not found and solved now, when will it be done? If there is a problem at the policy level, bring proposals for improvement based on facts," said Dahal. PM Dahal warned that weakness in the budget implementation cannot be tolerated any longer. "On the one hand, revenue has not increased as per the target and capital expenditure is low, and on the other hand, the issues of arrears are there. This has made the whole cycle of fiscal administration problematic. It is important to be sensitive about it," said Dahal. Dahal has instructed the National Planning Commission to immediately prepare a plan to speed up the pace of physical progress of development progress. According to Dahal, if the funds allocated for development projects cannot be spent, they will be transferred to projects that can be spent elsewhere, and arrangements will be made to link the work of officials who are responsible for revenue collection and development work according to the target with their performance evaluation.