Minister Mahat urges all to consider difficult circumstances surrounding budget

Finance Minister Dr Prakash Sharan Mahat has said the government brought the budget amidst difficult circumstances and urged one and all to take it accordingly.

In his replies to concerns raised during the deliberations on the government’s estimations of revenues and expenditures for the fiscal year 2023-24 in a meeting of the House of Representatives (HoR) today, the Minister said the size of foreign and internal debts, the existing scenario of revenue collection, consequences of Covid-19, and the impact of Russia-Ukraine war were taken into account while preparing the budget.

As he said, the government through the budget assured that problems would be resolved gradually not instantly. He admitted that the distribution approach in budget-making could not be fully discouraged this time, too.

“We received commitments for additional foreign assistance.  The government sets its priorities on the basis of people’s needs,” he said, adding that the government brought the budget not seeking popularity but considering its implementation side.

Special circumstances such as increasing loan and a fall in revenue collections and the foreign assistance among others led to a shrunken size of the budget, he added.

The Finance Minister utilised the forum that the Parliament Development Infrastructure Programme would contribute to increasing capital expenditures.

As he said, the programme was incorporated in the budget in a bid to address complaints of parliamentarians that budget to their respective constituencies was insufficient to undertake development endevours.

“The budget to be allocated under the programme will not go into pockets of parliamentarians. It will be spent for road, infrastructure and tourism developments and parliamentarians have just their roles in recommending projects.

The budget is capable of getting transferred to most essential capital budget if it remains unspent,” he said.

The programme aims to address the people’s aspirations for seeing shared responsibility of their representatives in needs, according to him.

In the deliberations over budget that had run for eight days in the House of Representatives, lawmakers commented over the budget from multiple angles.

The government was accused of lacking a clear vision, not internalizing the goals of socialism and of presenting ambitious targets of economic growth and revenue in the budget.

Additionally, the government was criticized for ‘being unable’ to discourage general expenditures and for allocating less budget to agriculture and health sectors.