Kathmandu, May 7
Financial affairs and planning ministers of all seven provinces of the country are holding a meeting with federal Minister for Finance Yubaraj Khatiwada today urging him to increase the ceiling of budget to be allocated to provincial governments from the centre.
Khatiwada is busy preparing the annual budget statement for next fiscal year that has has to present in Parliament in the last week of this month and he has proposed that each province be given Rs 15 billion from the central government.
However, chief ministers and finance ministers of provinces, most of whose belong to Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and Finance Minister Khatiwada’s CPN-UML party, have concluded that Rs 15 billion is too meagre to expedite development activities as planned.
They say a province should be given Rs 100 billion. The federal government, however, says meeting their demand will render the government unable to operate itself smoothly.
Former bureaucrats have also expressed their opinion against giving more money to provincial governments and the provinces should explore and utilise their own revenue sources.
