Finance Minister Sharma urges for boosting capital spending

Finance Minister Janardan Sharma has urged different ministries to make cent percent of capital spending in the remaining six months of the current fiscal year.

At a review of expenditure made so far in the current fiscal year at the Ministry of Finance today, Minister Sharma asked the secretaries of different ministries to work to boost capital spending at an optimum level.

Saying that he was ever ready to cooperate with the ministries as and when necessary, Minister Sharma asked them to spur spending by all means. “First six months of the fiscal year has elapsed. In remaining six months, we should make cent percent budget spending”, he emphasized.

The minister said that other measures would also be explored for budget spending and urged the secretaries of the ministries to boost spending for now. He stressed the need to engage local level and local people in mega projects.

Minister Sharma was of the view that the engagement of the local level and the people in big projects was critically important to secure their ownership and buy-in and also expedite the implementation part. Underscoring the need for improvement in the prevailing system, he pitched for digitization to avoid sluggish performance.

“It takes a couple of days to take the files to departments and ministries. This way of working is also taking our time unnecessarily”. “We have no option but to go to the digitalized system. It has the feature to allow request and approval of the projects digitally”, the minister noted.

Of late the ministry of finance has been following up other ministries to spur capital spending. Meanwhile, as per the data up to Monday, the capital expenditure in the current fiscal year was 9.39 percent, recurrent expenditure 38.9 percent and financial management spending 25.41 percent.