And to the nightmare of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) officials, chances of such is only growing as neither the government has sincerely approached the major parties for formulating a consensus budget nor are parties outside the government ready to allow caretaker government to come up with budget with new programs.[break]
“The caretaker government has no right to bring full-fledged budget including new programs,” said Dr Ram Sharan Mahat, Nepali Congress leader and former finance minister. “If it wants to serve the country with full-fledged budget and new programs, it must forge consensus at the political front,” he added.
Similar is the opinion of CPN UML leader Surendra Pandey. In fact, he viewed that the present government has no authority to come up with full-fledged budget mainly because the country lacks legislature-parliament to endorse it and there are no institutions to ensure proper check-and balances.
“There must be a national consensus for announcing the budget through ordinance as well,” said Pandey.
Though Finance Minister Basrha Man Pun earlier this week announced that he would formulate a mechanism, involving representatives of all major political parties, he has not officially approached the parties in this connection. “And informal efforts have failed to yield the desired result,” said a source.
Moreover, given that both NC and UML are spearheading the demand of all the parties outside the government for PM Bhattarai to step down, senior government officials said they do not see chances of leading political parties agreeing on the budget under the present structure.
“This paints bleak picture of budget announcement this year as well,” said a senior official at National Planning Commission (NPC). Except for the fiscal year 2011/12, the country has failed to get full-fledged budget on time since the CA elections.
Referring to this fact, Pun stated that the failure to come up with full-fledged budget on time has already wasted huge opportunities over the previous three years. “This has cost the economy and development endeavors heavily. Hence, we are hopeful major parties will respond to our call for consensus budget positively,” he said.
Talking to Republica, Pun said he has not yet given up hope over forming an all-party mechanism for budget formulation. He disclosed he had already started approaching experts and former Finance Ministers, seeking suggestions for the budget.
However, sources said the former Finance Ministers from NC and UML, among others, have categorically refused to participate in such discussions. “They are seeking the government to first end of political deadlock,” said the source.
Meanwhile, officials involved in the budget formulation process said they have almost completed technical procedures and will be ready to finalize the budget for 2011/12 within the next 10 days.
After completing discussions on policy and broader programs of the upcoming budget, MoF is presently holding discussions with all the line ministries over fine tuning programs and allocations. “The process will be completed by mid-June and we will be ready to announce the budget any time,” said a MoF source.
Lok Darshan Regmi, chief of Budget and Program Division of MoF said the Ministry would strictly stick with the ceiling worked out by the NPC and draft the budget sized at Rs 429.60 billion for 2012/13.
“It (budget) will channelize fund in the priority sectors such as infrastructure development, agriculture and industries, among others,” Regmi added.
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