EDITORIAL
Since last October, the governments – either led by Sher Bahadur Deuba or led by Pushpakamal Dahal — have remained totally non-functional. As the leaders were busy with their election campaign, they didn’t take any vital decisions for the nation. After the general elections, Pushpakamal Dahal Prachanda has become the prime minister but from day one he started a conspiracy for changing the coalition partners. Within 64 days, he was found shifting to another camp. Even after bagging a vote of confidence for the second time within two months PM Dahal is found busy managing the leaders of ten parties in his cabinet. The political leadership wasted valuable time just bargaining ministerial portfolios, lucrative ministries and becoming the minister in the government. We have not heard a single word about developing the nation and making the people prosperous.
The country’s economic scenario is very bleak. PM Dahal knows better about the country’s economy. His DPM Narayankaji Shrestha revealed that the country is passing through a critical economic stage. Accordingly, former minister and UML leader Bishnu Poudel said that the country’s economy has reached a critical stage. He said that the government is unable to manage general sector expenditure from the internal revenue, as result, the government cannot manage pensions and salaries for the civil servicemen and social security allowances as well.
The ground reality is that exports have superficially declined, whereas, imports have enormously inclined. Among the exported items also, palm oil and soybean oil is excessively high. In fact, these oils are being imported from third countries by paying American dollars and exported to the Indian market receiving the Indian currency. This type of export doesn’t contribute to the nation narrowing the trade deficit gap. The government has already fallen into a critical economic trap as it solely relied on revenue received from the customs on imports of luxury items. A decline in imports of such luxury items will adversely impact revenue collection. On the other hand, if allowed to import such luxury items, the foreign currency reserve will be adversely affected. Meanwhile, the amount of grant support has declined and the government is relying on debts in managing the budget expenditure. In the past five years, the debt amount has become double, which is an alarm for the economy.
A political system can sustain if the country can comfortably manage the necessary revenue to spend. When expenditure is high than the revenue, the government depend on domestic as well as foreign loans. This is not a permanent solution. The country has adopted such an expensive political system with seven provinces without looking at the revenue side. The country has to feed hundreds of ministers, over five hundred provincial members, 334 parliamentarians in the federal parliament and many other unnecessary positions have added the expenditure of billions of rupees. Sure, the crisis will further deepen if we continue to exercise the present political system. Before declaring the country a failed state, we suggest returning to the 1990 constitution for rescuing the nation.
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