Budget : The Big Money

Budget, the only thing the government does every year. It is the lifeblood of the country. The way it is made is the guiding force for the people and the whole country as whole. The most important aspects of livelihood of every people; their income and expenses and overall the country’s livelihood of earning, spending the developing of the country as a whole. How the country collects funds for its development and regular operational running and where to spend the finance collected depends on the budget, the National Budget.

Budget is the quantitative plan of the financial assets of an individual, organization or the country as a whole for a certain period of time. It is normally made on a yearly basis and defines each and every plan of the entity for that period of time. The government or national budget is the biggest among all the budgets. It shows the various plans of the government and related quantitative definitions of the plans and policies. It defines all the sources of incomes and headings of expenses. Any government budget can be segregated into operational, capital investment and cash flow budget according to their tenure and areas or sectors of assortment. Budget are for definitive period of time normally for a year and the plans are set up according to the ways to meet the targets and proper utilization of the budget values. It helps to provide the overall progress and result achievement of the last year and make out new plans for the coming years.

As we know Nepal government has just published the budget for 2013-14. It seems we are still in a phase of making out the budget declaration only. The budget heads seems of high priority and on the next year’s as well we get the same heads with increased amount of budget and the result just are too unsatisfactory. Most of the plans just don’t start up and the started projects just don’t end up good enough. The money goes out but nowhere to the respective areas. The development budget just go untouched and the most of the budget gets transferred from heading to heading and just got off the sheet with an ease.

Our budget year start up from mid July  and end up at another mid July. Most of the budget incomes and financial sources are revenues and the rest are foreign grants and loans. As the past years’ budget this year’s budget is basically the current operational budget. Low amount of finances have been supplied to the development heads leading to the low development process. There are more of the promises, which will be difficult to keep up with like, water supply, irrigation, energy, railways and highways. Though these headings seem achievable and plausible but still the implementation is our worst part. We always play the nice budget game but we loose in the game design. This is due to the fact that we don’t have any responsible and dependable entity that can take care of the people’s money. Under this year a huge amount of money is for the election of Constituent Assembly. The CA was to set up the Constituent of the country years back and still our government is unable to do from the years time and again we are to elect the another CA members. The energy sector have got more budget than that of the last year’s. It has been increased to 30 billiion from that of 26 billion from the 2012-13 budget. Lets hope they will be properly utilized and we won’t have to wait longer hours to put our switches on. Various hydropower and alternative energy projects have been listed and they will be served up well by the budget in this year. Water supply and irrigation have also got some significance. The agriculture sector has got an increased amount of 21 billion huge. The education and health sectors have got their good shares as well. Overall the budget has been allocated to more or less all the economic sectors of the country. From transportation to agriculture and election to education all in all are reached.

The main problem of this budget as the previous ones is the proper implementation of the funds. Most of the development budgets won’t be used and most of them are misused in other areas. Due to the lack of transparent system and strong authority the budget amounts get misused from time and again and under heading to heading. The budget get formed under the political influences and they got allocated to their priorities rather the overall country’s needs and areas of requirement. Not only that the political influences are so powerful that the sources also get segregated for the plans and policies. The most weak part in our economy is to base the budget itself in  foreign loans, grants and financial assistance from international community. The only solution to this issue is that we should have some strong budget making authority rather than the political government. There should be some strong presence of budget making authority up to the local level rather than  the ministries and political headquarters. Until the local level could be able to participate in the budget making process the development of the nation will always get stuck.

Above all, whatever the budget will be the only best way to get the proper result is via proper implementation of the plans and funds. Otherwise the budget will be in papers and reports only rather than in the ground root development of the country.

Note: You can get all the details on budget  on http://mof.gov.np