'Supplementary budget should be announced if election is held in this fiscal'

KATHMANDU, Feb 25: The government will have to come up with a supplementary budget if the proposed election for Constituent Assembly (CA) is held within the current fiscal year, officials said on Monday.



“We are not in a position to allocate sufficient budget for the proposed election given the resources available with us. We will have no option but to suggest the government to announce supplementary budget to avert fund crunch for election,” Rajan Khanal, joint secretary at the Ministry of Finance, told Republica on Monday. [break]



The government has allocated Rs 246 billion for regular expenditure under which Rs 16 billion has been set aside under ´miscellaneous´ expenditure heading in the partial budget for 2012/13. Of the total amount allocated under the miscellaneous heading, Rs 10 billion has been allocated for election purpose.



The partial budget issued through ordinance allows the government to spend only Rs 351 billion in the current fiscal year.



“With Rs 246 billion, we can´t even arrange funds for regular expenditure. So, we need a supplementary budget if the election is to be held within this fiscal year,” added Khanal, who is the chief of Revenue Division of the MoF.



Khanal said additional resources required for payment of gratuity for pensioners and salary grades of employees were putting extra burden on regular expenditure this year compared to last year.



To arrange the budget of Rs 351 billion, the government has set the target of collecting revenue of Rs 292 billion. However, additional fund to be arranged from foreign aid is also not going up as expected by the government on the back of weak capital spending.

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