Talking to myrepublica.com, Finance Minister Surendra Pandey said the government was serious over slow capital expenditure than planned and was doing all possible steps to expedite expenditure that finances development activities. [break]
We are looking into possibilities of picking up a number of projects whose detail feasibility study have already been completed and go into implementation immediately if resources are made available, Pandey said.
Minister Pandey also informed that the government has already released more than Rs 4 billion to such projects and added that the Ministry of Finance is working on more projects that qualify for direct financing.
"Propelled by the latest efforts, we are expecting the total capital expenditure scale up to Rs 90 billion by the end of this fiscal year," Pandey said.
The government in its budget for the current fiscal year has earmarked Rs 106.29 billion for capital expenditure. Of the allocated amount, Rs 87.18 billion is expected to go for cash expenditure while remaining Rs 19.10 billion will go for direct payment and commodity assistance. However, the government has been able to spend just Rs 18.41 billion or 16 percent of the cash allocation by the third week of February.
Further elaborating recent actions that the government has recently implemented, Minister Pandey said that Ministry of Finance has released additional budget worth Rs 600 million to Mid-Hill Highway Project in addition to budgetary allocation of Rs 80 million. Additional allocations were made available after assessing the overall performances of the project, he said.
Similarly, budget allocation for bridge construction has also been increased by Rs 2 billion. Now the total budget for bridge construction has gone up to Rs 4.50 billion, he said.
He further added that the government is also planning to increase its direct cash grant amount to micro-hydropower projects and is aiming to launch up to 100 such projects by the end of this fiscal year.
Currently, the government has been providing 50 percent grant to 50-100 kilowatts micro-hydropower projects and is raising the grant amount to 75 percent provided that the concerned user group produces proof of availability of remaining 25 percent.
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