JUN 03 - KATHMANDU,
Amid disruption of parliamentary proceedings by lawmakers from both ruling coalition and opposition party over virement (transfer of budgetary funds from one heading to another), Finance Ministry sources have revealed that there has indeed been virement of more than Rs 15-16 billion.
Lawmakers from CPN (UML) and UCPN (Maoist) say a huge amount of funds has been transferred to Urban Development, Federal Affairs and Local Development and Physical Infrastructure and Transport ministries under non-budgetary headings.
Although the ministry officials claim that there has not been transfer of resources to non-budgetary headings which are not mentioned in the budget.
They, however, said it could happen in the programmes under ‘peoples participation’ heading. “It is possible that resources under ‘people’s participation’ heading were transferred to non-budgetary headings,” said the official.
“In the case of the programmes to be carried out with people’s participation, we provide budget in bulk and the concerned ministry takes a decision regarding the virement.”
Interestingly, most of the programmes under ‘people’s participation’ heading are handled by the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development. UML and UCPN (Maoist) lawmakers say the virement to non-budgetary headings has largely done at the Local Development Ministry headed by the Nepali Congress.
“Budget has been transferred to the projects but that was neither mentioned in the budgetary heading at the central level nor the local level,” said UML lawmaker Rabindra Adhikari. “The budget is found to have been transferred to Priority 2 and 3 projects from Priority 1 projects.”
Adhikari said that they did not oppose the virement itself, but they were against the transfer of the budget to non-budgetary ones. “Barring 2-3 Kathmandu -based projects, the Local Development Ministry has transferred amount under non-budgetary headings,” he added.
UCPN (Maoist) lawmaker Agni Sapkota said that the transfer of budget has not been transparent and it has been done to pay the ruling parties’ cadres. “There should be a parliamentary probe into this virement,” he said.
The government argues that it should conduct the virement to transfer the budget to the projects that require extra budget from the ones that have failed to spend.
As of June 1, the government’s overall spending has been 56 percent and 40.5 percent under the capital budget. It means the government is yet to spend capital budget of Rs 51 billion out of allocated Rs 85 billion.
“The ministries’ failure to spend allocated budget on time has allowed this tendency to creep in,” said a Finance Ministry official.
The row over budget transfer has also drawn donors’ concern. A senior NPC official said that World Bank officials had expressed concerns over the virement row, suggesting that the tendency of virement would not serve purpose of financial discipline.
ekantipur
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