The government released the 31-page White Paper on Economic Condition of the Country and Policy Concept of the Government to highlight its policies and programs to be included in the upcoming budget for the fiscal year 2011/12. [break]
The government is presenting budget for next fiscal year in the first week of May.
“The White Paper is the guiding principle of programs and policies of the government for the coming budget. The process of preparing new budget has begun with the issuance of the white paper. The government has dropped the plan of issuing supplementary budget,” Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Bharat Mohan Adhikari said after releasing the White Paper.
He assured that the government would implement the budget for this fiscal year with priority and give continuity to them in the upcoming budget.
The White Paper incorporates working policies that include providing relief to people by ensuring accessibility to agriculture inputs, easy availability of essential commodities, and strengthening market monitoring to discourage food adulteration.
Amid booming real estate business and other unproductive activities in arable land, the White Paper has stressed the need to formulate law to discourage such activities to increase agriculture production. In a bid to strengthen food security and generate higher employment from the agriculture sector, the White Paper also underlines the need for modernization and commercialization of agriculture sector that has been contributing more than one-third of the total gross domestic product of the country.
The government has also given top priority to forging alliance between public, cooperative and private sector to generate employment for youths through youth self-employment programs and increasing access to foreign employment for underprivileged groups.
“We will give top priority to three pillars of economy -- public, cooperatives and private sector - for higher employment generation. Commercialization of farms through farmers´ cooperatives is also our top priority,” said Adhikari.
The White Paper also includes programs to promote private sector by announcing different incentives to increase industrial production and productivity and ending syndicate system in different sectors.
Though the White Paper, the government has also expressed commitment for effective implementation of programs announced to deal with energy crisis by encouraging investment in hydropower sector. Similarly, promotion of good governance, increasing capital expenditure, streamlining public expenditure and infrastructure development to increase accessibility to telecommunication services are also among the priority programs included in the White Paper.
Speaking on the occasion, Nepal Rastra Bank Governor Dr Yubraj Khatiwada, said investment climate in the country is deteriorating due to political instability, labor unrest and power shortage. “Unrest in different labor destinations in the Middle-East and Africa has reduced remittance growth which was already slowing over the last couple of years,” he added.
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