Check unaccounted inflow of foreign aid: Chief Secy

KATHMANDU, Aug 24: Chief Secretary Lila Mani Paudyal on Friday expressed concern over long-running trend of donors directly providing assistances to non-governmental organizations and other agencies by not informing their pledges to the national system or aligning them with national priority, and instructed the Ministry of Finance (MoF) to check such practices.



Paudyal issued such instruction when he made inspection visit to MoF on the day. Addressing the ministry officials, he also urged all the ministries to instantly get their respective development programs endorsed by National Planning Commission (NPC) and start executing them. [break]



Paudyal also asked Ministry of Urban Development to speed up the road expansion drive in Kathmandu and directed MoF not to let the national pride projects suffer from the scarcity of budget. “Finance ministry is a focal ministry for carrying out overall systemic reforms. Hence, we seek its officials to perform their duties with strong moral, integrity and efficiency,” he said.



Paudyal also instructed the MoF officials to further tighten screws against tax evasion and raise ratio of revenue to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 20 percent from existing less than 16 percent. He also urged the finance ministry to intensify actions against money laundering and put in place scientific and transparent mechanism for staff transfer.



In his address, Paudyal expressed satisfaction over the performance of the finance ministry, but pinpointed that the Ministry has still a lot to do to widen the tax net and facilitate flow of investments toward productive sectors and creation of new jobs.



“Still a large number of high income earning groups like doctors, engineers, lawyers, communication specialists and other service sector professionals are out of the tax net. The ministry must take effective steps to bring them within tax net,” he stated.



On the occasion, finance secretary Krishna Hari Baskota made presentations on present outlook of country´s economy and briefed steps taken by the ministry to automate its offices and systems.



Stating that the announcement of one-third budget has largely cramped the government from carrying out regular development works, he also said that the MoF was also pushing for earliest announcement of full-fledged budget to normalize fiscal operations and stir confidence in the private sector.

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