Rs 11bn of provincial budget frozen in Sudurpaschim

Sudurpaschim Province Government has failed to utilize Rs 11bn of the budget allocated for the fiscal year 2022/23.

Out of the total allocation of Rs 35bn in 2022/23, the provincial government could spend only Rs 24bn by mid-July 2023. The provincial government has stated that Rs 7bn from the capital budget and Rs 4bn from the recurrent budget remained unutilized in the previous fiscal year, which concluded in mid-July.

According to Basudev Joshi, chief of Sudurpashchim Treasury Controller Office, only Rs 15bn out of the allocated Rs 22.84bn for the capital budget was expended. Similarly, Rs 8bn out of the allocated Rs 12.3bn for recurrent expenditure was utilized during the review year.

“Despite having numerous development plans, the province government lacked sufficient personnel to execute them,” Joshi explained. “This hindered the spending process.”

Joshi further mentioned that the majority of the unspent budget consisted of equalization grants and conditional grants received from the federal government.

The provincial government has been allocating budgets for projects even smaller than those prepared by local units. Under the Ministry of Physical Planning alone, there were 6,200 projects with budgets ranging from Rs 300,000 to Rs 50m.

“The budgets are allocated with the intention of favoring party cadres and individuals close to influential figures. There is a practice of implementing projects through consumer committees led by party cadres to pocket commissions,” said Rajendra Singh Rawal, the parliamentary party leader of CPN-UML in the provincial assembly. “Under such circumstances, how can the budget be fully spent this year?”

In terms of capital expenditure, the Ministry of Industry, Tourism, Forest, and Environment achieved the highest spending progress at 79 percent, while the Office of the Chief Minister and Council of Ministers attained the lowest progress at 49 percent.

Similarly, the spending progress of the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure stood at 73 percent, the Ministry of Social Development at 71 percent, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Planning at 65 percent, the Ministry of Land Management, Agriculture and Cooperatives at 65 percent, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Law at 56 percent.

This is the second term of the Sudurpaschim Province Government. The average budget spending has remained at 60-65 percent over the past five years. In previous years, the budget spending stood at 59 percent in 2018/19, 62 percent in 2019/20, 64 percent in 2020/21, and 66 percent in 2021/22.

“In the previous fiscal year, budgets were allocated for fragmented projects, and we also faced a shortage of technical staff,” Naresh Bahadur Shahi, Minister of Economic Affairs of Sudurpaschim Province, stated. “Now, we have discontinued fragmented programs. These programs will be implemented by local units. We expect an improvement in spending in the current fiscal year.”

Approximately one-fourth of the budget for 2022/23, amounting to Rs 9bn, was spent in the last month of the fiscal year alone i.e. from mid-June to mid-July.