By Our Reporter
The government has failed to raise the revenue collection even more than two months after the expenditures surpassed its income.
The revenue the government has been collecting is not sufficient even to cover the recurrent expenditure that includes payments for goods and services, salaries, interest payments and subsidies.
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and other leaders who addressed the House session on Tuesday did not forget to mention the economic crises being faced by Nepal.
As of January 2, the government collected Rs. 356.8 billion in revenue including tax and non-tax revenue, grants and other receipts, which is 26.75 per cent of this year’s total revenue target of Rs. 1458.6 billion. But the total expenditure is Rs. 503.6 billion – 28 per cent of the total budget of Rs. 1793.8 billion, according to the statistics published by the Financial Comptroller General Office (FCGO).
Likewise, recurrent expenditure has reached Rs. 396.8 billion which is Rs. 40 billion higher than the revenue collected.
By mid-October, the income and expenditure of the government remained at Rs. 232.5 billion and 278.3 billion respectively, creating a gap of Rs. 45.8 billion between the income and expenses.
This gap climbed to Rs. 113.5 billion as of January 2 and this has worried both government and private sector. If this gap continues to widen, the government won’t have enough funds to pay the salaries and pensions of the employees and it has to raise loans to finance the everyday functions of the state agencies.
Meanwhile, the utilisation of the budget earmarked for the development projects has also remained poor with expenses of just 11.39 per cent – Rs. 43.3 billion of the target of Rs. 380.3 billion.
Prime Minister Puspa Kamal Dahal Prachanda expressed worries at the House with data, “Only 25 per cent revenue is collected even when the first half of the year is nearing its end. The recurrent expenditure is 33 per cent while development expenditure has remained at a meagre 11 per cent only.”
Earlier last week, he directed the secretaries of the federal ministries to find the reasons behind the poor revenue mobilisation.
According to the FCGO, the government has spent more money on debt servicing and investment than on development projects. The total expenditure of the government includes Rs. 396.8 billion in recurrent, Rs. 4 3.3 in capital expenditure and Rs. 63.4 billion in financing.
Similarly, the income of the government is Rs. 329.5 billion in tax and Rs. 27.2 billion in non-tax revenue, Rs. 3.4 billion in grants and Rs. 29.8 billion in other receipts.
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