Kathmandu, July 15
Over 60 per cent of the 753 local governments in Nepal have failed to present their annual budget by Wednesday for the next fiscal year beginning Thursday.
Whereas the law stipulates Asar 10 (June 14) as the deadline for announcing the annual budget, less than 40 per cent of the governments have announced their budget so far, according to the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration.
In total, 452 local units are yet to announce the plan. Only around 20 per cent of the local units in Province 2 have been successful in presenting their budget on time. Province 5 and Gandaki have the highest budget announcement rates among their local units at 56 per cent and 55 per cent respectively.
Hom Narayan Shrestha, the chairman of the National Association of Rural Municipality, an organisation of rural municipalities across the country, however, claims the ministry’s record is wrong. “Among 460 rural municipalities across the country, 410 had already presented their budget by June 24,” he claims.
Ashok Byanju Shrestha, the president of the Municipal Association of Nepal, an organisation of urban municipalities across the country, accepts the failure and attributes the delay to the federal government’s failure to allocate budget to local units on time. “We also did not have short-term and long-term plans,” he says.
