Kathmandu, February 13: The government has reduced the size of the budget for the current fiscal year by 10 percent to Rs 1 trillion 385 billion and 963 million.
While presenting a mid-term review of the annual financial plan on Wednesday (Feb 12), Finance Minister Yuba Raj Khatiwada said that the budget has been resized as the government may not be able to spend the total allocated amount.
Following such revision, the government will allocate 944.68 billion for recurrent expenditure, Rs326.81 billion for capital expenditure, and Rs 154.69 billion for financing provisions. More than Rs 81 billion has been cut down from the capital spending budget.
Similarly, the government plans to mobilize Rs 1.132 trillion in revenue and domestic loans while it expects to secure Rs 43.554 billion in foreign grants.
“In order to finance the deficit in the budget, we are raising Rs 2.09 as foreign debt. This has been resized to 95.5% of the earlier version of the budget for this fiscal year,” states Minister Dr. Khatiwada.
Of the total allocated budget, only 27.6 percent i.e Rs 422,556 has been spent so far. During this period, a total of Rs 396.068 has been spent under the recurrent title which accounts for 32.4 percent while only 15.4 percent budget under capital expenditure that equals to Rs 62.766 billion. Budget expenditure has increased by 6 percent compared to the same period in the last fiscal year 2018/19.
Out of the Rs 102 billion allocated for national pride projects, only 19 percent or Rs 20 billion has been spent so far, Minister Khatiwada said.
Inflation also remained high at 6.4 percent, compared to 4.2 percent during the same period in the last fiscal year.
