However, officials said the government has not indicated whether it is bringing a supplementary budget for the rest of the current fiscal year, something which UCPN Maoist has been demanding, or a regular budget.[break]
“The fate of supplementary budget is still unclear, but we began exercises on the new budget with National Planning Commission from Tuesday,” said a source.
The fresh initiatives to draft early budget was taken after Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Bharat Mohan Adhikari instructed the MoF´s Budget Division to draft the new budget at the earliest.
Bodh Raj Niraula, chief of MoF´s Budget Division, disclosed that the Ministry on the day mainly held consultations over shortening the budget formulation process so that the new budget could be finalized at the earliest.
“If the government gave its clearance, we can complete the process of drafting the budget within a month,” he told Republica.
Adhikari said on Sunday said that the government was committed to bringing a new budget before May 3.
MoF has been pushing for the early budget for it fears that the country could miss timely announcement of budget next year as well, particularly as the deadline of Constituent Assembly is expiring on May 28. It had even initiated basic exercises for preparing the budget. However, the process had derailed following the lack of clarity on the issue by the newly formed government.
While Adhikari had been strongly favoring early budget, UCPN (Maoist) that has not recognized the present budget announced by Finance Minister Surendra Pandey has been pushing for supplementary budget to prove its point.
“Technically, we don´t have any problem in preparing early budget,” said Dr Pushkar Bajracharya, former member of National Planning Commission. “We already know the ceilings and different ministries had already told us what their priority programs are.”
Dr Bajracharya advocated that the government is adopting the practice of unveiling early budget, particularly as it will give momentum to timely spending of development budget.
Absence of timely budget, which has been witnessed for the last three years, has mainly hurt development, reducing job and income opportunities. Delayed announcement of budget has even been creating deeper financial problems, as lack of flow of money from national treasury has been sparking problems like liquidity shortage in the market.
Related story
MoF nears completion of budget documents, begins finalizing bud...
-1200x560-1779450784.webp)
