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Nepalese Budget for FY 2009 (2066)
By KTM Metro Reporter in Kathmandu
On July 13, 2009, Minister for Finance Surendra Pandey has delivered the annual budget of the government of Nepal for the FY 2009 (2066). The Minister was supposed to deliver the budget on 3:00 P.M. but he started reading out the budget only after one and a half hour later indicating the Finance Minister of twenty one and a half political parties out of twenty four political parties representing in the parliament has relapsed into the habit of not keeping the business on schedule.
Then, the members of business community refused to sit along with the common folks in the parliament to listen to the budget speech of the Finance Minister. So, they left the parliament hall demanding the special seats for the members of the business community as reserved for them in the past.
The Maoist members of parliament except for one or two were absent in the parliament during the budget speech. They said that they would protest the budget of the unconstitutional government, as they did against the policies and programs of the government. Similarly, only a few members of the Madhehsi People’s Rights Forum headed by Upendra Yadav were seen in the parliament during the budget speech.
Finance Minister Surendra Pandey took two hours to read out the budget of Rs 285.93 billion rupees for the fiscal year 2009 (2066). The budget has allocated a huge sum of money for subsidy and grants. For example, the budget has allocated Rs 1,500 millions for subsidy on fertilizers. The government wants to put this amount of the taxpayers’ money in the pockets of the farmers but most of the money will go into the pockets of the smugglers, as the fertilizers in Nepal will be cheaper. Even the high-ranking officials working at the supply ministry and the minister will tend to involve in smuggling fertilizers, as it will bring them windfall benefits. The international community had put tremendous pressure on the then-government to do away with the subsidy on fertilizers about ten years ago. The current government headed by the CPN-UML leader has put the evil back in the system.
As usual in the past, the government has allocated major resources to the infrastructures development, hydropower and irrigation but most of the time the government has failed in materializing those projects. So, Nepal does not have a single hydro power stations and major roads and irrigation system built during the last fifteen years of the NC-led government.
The current budget will not bring any significant change in the national economy but surely put back the evils of the subsidy on fertilizers.
