Policy And Program Of The Government For Fiscal Year 2020

Policy And Program Of The Government For Fiscal Year 2020

Siddhi B. Ranjitkar

The entire Nepalis had been anticipating that the Oli administration would bring the policy and program to cope with the potential negative economic growth in the aftermath of the coronavirus, and the stimulus packages to bring back the economic activities the coronavirus had halted for such a long time but what the president read out the policy and program in the federal parliament on May 15, 2020 for almost three hours to the lawmakers wearing the garuda (imaginary human bird) masks to scare away the virus, had been limited to the high sounding promises and commitments made as in the election campaign without considering the past performances of the Oli administration. Anybody listening to the policy and program had surely wasted the three hours of the precious time, and I am wasting a day for writing this comment, as nothing would change the working style of the Oli administration no matter what had been said in the policy and program for the FY 2020.

The three things directly influence the fast economic growth are the state policy, program, and the budget. The policy steers the economic development to the right direction, the program supports the fast track economic development, and the budget expedites the development in general. All these three components as the wheels of a development vehicle need to function harmoniously then only the economic development is possible as has been elsewhere in the world. This year, the policy and program should be especially for stimulating the economic activities the coronavirus had put on hold for so long.

Farmers had seen the millions of worth of bananas rotted in the farms because they could not take the bananas to the market, and the consumers had been under the stay-at-home order and they could not get the precious nutritious fruits. Dairy farmers had to spill their milks on the streets, poultry farmers had to destroy their chicken and break millions of eggs tossing on the streets because they could not take those products to the markets. Vegetable farmers needed to plow their ripe crops, as they could not take those products to market. Recently, some lawmakers speaking at the House session stated that trucks of vegetables from India had entered into the Nepalese market while the Nepalese farmers were helpless to take their products to the market.

The policy and program should have been to assist the farmers to take those products from their farms to the markets. Using the state vehicles the army, the police and the civil administration had, the Oli administration could have transported the farm products to the market offsetting the losses the farmers had incurred for their no faults. That policy and program would have benefited both the consumers and producers, and the Oli administration would reap the golden opportunity to have the two-thirds majority in the parliament even in the next general elections.

Small business owners had been totally disarrayed by the lockdown the Oli administration had imposed on the people to save the entire populace from the deadly virus. Those small business owners would not be able to pay the rent for the facilities taken for running mo-mo restaurants, for small provision stores, for any other small stores, for running barber shops, for running small garment industry or tailoring shops. Thousands of such businesses anybody could name had been totally damaged by the virus.

What the Oli administration could do for those small business owners to prevent them from going bankrupt and bring them back to the regular businesses should be the part of the policy and program of the Oli administration. How the Oli administration could put money back in the pockets of those business owners so that they could run their businesses as usual should be most of the program. The immediate action the Oli administration could take is to pay the rent for them instead of asking the facilities owners to waive the rent.

The tourism industry and the aviation industry had been totally ruined as other industries had been. The aviation companies had parked their airplanes at the airports hangers instead of flying them for most of the time. Hotels were locked up. Restaurants were closed. Hundreds of thousands of the people employed in this economic sector had been laid off. The Oli administration needed to bring out the relief packages for those laborers and officials working in this tourism and aviation sector to have at least survival kits for the long layoffs, as the State employees received for the period of the lockdown.

The transport industry had been another victim of the coronavirus. Thousands of people had invested their capital in transport vehicles such as buses, mini-buses, taxi and so on. Many of them must have taken the bank loans for purchasing those vehicles. Anybody could guess what must have happened to the vehicle owners when they could not run their buses either in the cities or on the long distance routes for months; and the taxi owners could not run their taxi losing their daily revenues; the same was true for other commercial vehicle owners, too. How many millions if not billions of rupees they must have lost for the period of keeping their vehicles idle. Again the policy and program of the Oli administration should be to assist them in remaining in the business.

Other sectors of the economy had incurred similar losses in billions if not hundreds of billions of rupees. The policy and the program of the Oli administration should be the stimulus packages to save all those economic sectors in crisis caused by the coronavirus.

So, the policy and program of the Oli administration should be to put the economy the virus had derailed back on track. However, the policy and the program the president had so meticulously read out had a little to ease the economy. It had said the economy would grow at the fastest speed. That would be true only when the Oli administration put the money in the pockets of the farmers, laborers, businesspeople, and industrialists and on the pockets of the entire population rather than putting the money in the pockets of a limited number of political cadres, ministers, their advisors, and construction and other contractors.

The policy and the program should be to bring back thousands of Nepalese migrant workers stranded in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world so that they could live at least peacefully with their families instead of living in isolation in foreign countries with little food and drinks for survival. They had earned billions of rupees in foreign currencies for the country and for themselves, too but if the State could not assist them at the time of the needs then they would be frustrated, and they would surely wait for the next general elections to turn the tables on the ruling party.

And then the policy and the program should be to create millions of jobs required for the returnees. The Oli administration should be able to recruit schoolteachers, health workers, and small business owners, and other service providers from among the returnees. Surely, the budget required for such program would be in billions of rupees but the State could manage it if the folks taking the wheel of the administration were absolutely determined to do the job.

What the policy and the program the Oli administration had put in the federal parliament through the president had a few significant ones as follow.

In the agricultural sector, the policy and the program of the Oli administration for the FY 2020 had been to double the agricultural production in the coming ten years instead of the past polices and program to double the agricultural products in five years. Any rational administration would put forward the analysis of what went wrong making the administration unable to achieve the target of doubling the agricultural products in the past years; and what measures would be taken for making sure that such failures would not repeat in the future, and the target would be achieved. In absence of the assessment of the past performances of the Oli administration in the agricultural sector, it was very hard to believe that the administration would achieve anything tangible in the coming fiscal year not to mention doubling the agricultural production in the next ten years.

The Oli administration would upgrade the education the State had been providing to the international standard, the policy and the program statement stated. It was nice to hear that the Oli administration was upgrading the education. The question was whether the folks involved in the education sector had gone through the cost and the investment the private sector education had incurred to provide the education no less standard than what the Oli administration called the international standard. The cost might be prohibitive for the State but it could do, provided again the performances of the Oli administration would be to keep the promises it had made rather than just engaging in the damage control measures to offset the damages the so many scams had caused.

The policy and the program of the FY 2020 had been to build so many hospitals with so many beds in so many places. It is easier said than done. Had anybody in the Oli administration gone to the private hospital owners and asked them how much they had invested in setting up and then running hospitals for providing the so high quality health services at the affordable cost, and at the same time make some money, then the Oli administration would have the different policy statement than what it had stated. The private sector had invested in the most modern cancer hospitals and other sorts of hospitals. So, the question was why the Oli administration did not create an environment conducive to the private investments in the kind of the hospitals that the Oli administration was thinking to build at least in words.

The International airport in Bhairava, and the regional airport in Pokhara would be done. Thank god the policy and program statement had not mention the Melamchi Drinking Water Project would be completed because completion of such mega projects would deny the folks in the administration endemic with the corruption the means of making money. So, it was no wonder that the completion of the large projects went on lingering.

Concerning the Indian encroachment on the Nepalese territory, the policy and the program statements of the Oli administration had been to engage in the diplomatic talks with India, and to publish a map of Nepal including the Lipulekh area. The Oli administration must have been doing so since India made public the Kashmir map in November last year showing the Nepalese Lipulekh areas as the part of India provoking the intense protests from the Nepalis. The Oli administration needed not wait for the next fiscal year to do such urgent things.

Recently, the Indian army chief stated that the border road passing through the Nepalese Lipulekh territory was within the line of control of India. Thus, India invented the line of control for Nepal probably for making the Lipulekh area of Nepal as a micro Kashmir as the line of control in the Kashmir area is the de facto border between Pakistan and India. Why the Oli administration did not take up the issue immediately rather than letting the Nepali army to say it would make a statement on this issue in an appropriate time.

The Policy and the program of the Oli administration had not been convincing to even the leaders of ruling Nepal Communist Party not to mention the opposition parties. The ruling party leaders had put forward their doubts about the policy and the program diplomatically stating the policy and the program were good but the implementation would be challenging in other words the implementation would not be possible.

The drastic policy and program statement of the Oli administration had been elimination of the corruption in the administration. The question was whether this statement was rational not to mention whether the people would believe it or not when the former minister for communication and information technology: Gokul Baskota vividly involved in negotiating a deal on receiving the commission on purchasing a security printing press so boldly attended the parliamentary session instead of sitting behind bars.

Austerity measures were another statements the policy and program of the Oli administration had stated to stop the unnecessary expenditures in the non-productive areas. However, billions of rupees had been used for the one hundred days of employment guarantee program hiring the folks so-called unemployed making them work on weeding out the grasses from the compounds of the state offices.

Had the Oli administration appropriately used the budget appropriated for the last two-and-a-half years, all the large projects would have completed that would have benefited millions of people from such projects immensely? The people in the Oli administration had been postponing the completion date of the large projects particularly the Melamchi Drinking Water Project. Nobody knew when the Melamchi Project would be completed and the folks in the Kathmandu Valley would have sufficient drinking water, and they would not need to buy the low quality water for drinking produced by so many water companies that would certainly lose their so lucrative business once the water from the Melamchi River flows to Kathmandu.

Surely, this time, the president missed the majestic ride on the royal horse-drawn carriage. She had settled on a simple black probably bulletproof car to ride to the parliamentary building after the strongest possible negative reactions from the common folks to the majestic ride of the president from Thapathali to the parliamentary building last year.

May 17, 2020