As the country grapples with the economic downturn that has affected the federal government's revenue collection, the Finance Ministry is likely to present a budget smaller in size for the next fiscal year.
The government had brought a Rs 1,793.83 billion budget for the current fiscal year. However, the National Planning Commission (NPC) has set a ceiling of Rs 1688.40 billion for the next fiscal year's budget. Minister Jwala said that despite the reduction in the budget ceiling, MoPIT is trying to allocate more resources under the capital expenditure heading. "Due to the difficult situation, the size of our ministry's budget has decreased. This may affect the development and construction work," he said in a program held at the ministry on Tuesday. "We will try to earmark more funds for the capital expenditure by cutting unnecessary recurrent expenditure as well as by prioritizing the projects." With a reduction in the budget size, the possibility of announcing new infrastructure projects in the next federal budget is slim. MoPIT officials also said works of the projects that are already under construction may also be affected. As the majority of large infrastructure projects fail to complete their construction within the deadline, the ministry is also planning to make a policy intervention to speed up the development of the projects. "There will be policy arrangements in place to improve coordination between inter-ministries, inter-agency, all three levels of government, and other agencies," said Jwala. The poor inter-agency coordination, particularly in acquisition of lands and forest clearance, has hampered the large infrastructure development projects related to hydropower and roads.
