Kathmandu, July 17
The fiscal year 2017/18 has ended on Monday. Like in past years, the government has missed meeting expense and revenue targets this year too.
As the current government holds a comfortable majority with the support of over two-thirds lawmakers, it had earlier claimed that it would be successful in achieving economic targets set for the fiscal year. Though it has already been nearly five months since the government took over, it could not show any concrete step for improvement.
According to Joint Comptroller General Jagannath Devkota, the government spent 83.64 per cent of total allocated budget in past one year. For the year, the budget of Rs 1.278 trillion was announced, but the total spent amount is less than Rs 1.1 trillion, according to him.
However, these data are preliminary calculations and final calculations may slightly vary, he adds.
The status of capital expenditure is more miserable. Devkota informs that 78.73 per cent of the capital budget has been spent in one year. Around one fifth share of this budget has been spent in the final month just to prevent the money from automatic freezing.
The spending rate of recurrent expenditure has stood at 86.62 per cent.
Meanwhile, the government collected around 98 per cent of the revenue target set for this year. The revenue target itself, however, was already reduced through a mid-term review.
The initial target was Rs 730 billion, and it was later corrected to Rs 728 billion. The government, however, collected around Rs 718 billion only.
