Acharya defends budget

June 4, 2000
3 MIN READ
A
A+
A-

Kathmandu, June 4: Finance Minister Mahesh Acharya has said that the government has increased the salaries of the civil servants to the possible extent on the recommendation of the Pay Commission.

Finance Minister Acharya said this while replying to questions raised in course of the discussions on the national budget for the fiscal year 2000/2001 in the House of Representatives and the National Assembly today.

Justifying the increase in the volume of the budget, he said the civil servants’ pay hike and the budgetary allocation for security have led to increased regular expenditure, while the increase in development expenditure has been precipitated by the budgetary allocations for big projects and the projects already under way.

Since the government is committed to bringing even the lower level within the vat fold and the vat net has been expanded, revenue collection in the next year is expected to increase by 14.3 per cent, he said.

In view of the agreements signed with various donor countries and the commitments they have made, the foreign aid target for the next year can be met without any problem, he added.

Since the government cannot be the sole player of economic activities, a policy of encouraging the private sector participation in economic activities has been adopted, the Finance Minister said, adding financial reform programmes should be launched vigorously to meet the objectives of the budget.

He also told Parliament that efforts are being made to bring trade deficit within the desired limit by enhancing exports and increasing the mobilisation of internal resources, check smuggling by increasing the effectiveness of vat, reduce administrative cost of programmes like B. P. with the Poor and women awareness and income generation programmes and make their composition indisputable.

He also stressed the need to identify the root cause of the Kamaiya problems and resolve them with the joint effort of the ruling and opposition parties.

Efforts are being made to maintain transparency and improve procedural matters in order to streamline the privatisation process, he said, adding the mps and the opposition party will be involved in the evaluation and monitoring of the privatization process.

The Maoist problem should not be looked upon in terms of the budgetary allocations, said the Finance Minister, adding that emphasis will be given to dialogue to resolve the problem.

The government is committed to ending dual ownership of land, he said, adding equal importance has been given to trade with India and the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China.

House of Representatives members Dilliraj Khanal, Buddhiman Tamang, Chitra Bahadur K.C., Subas Nemwang, Netra Lal Shrestha, Navaraj Subedi, Mahendra Bahadur Pandey, Mrs Urmila Aryal, Rajendra Prasad Pandey, Suresh Kumar Karki, Raghuji Pant, Prem Bahadur Singh, Mahendra Prasad Yadav, Dharmanath Prasad Saha, Yadav Bahadur Rayamajhi, Mangal Siddhi Manandhar, Ratna Prasad Sharma Neupane, Brijesh Kumar Gupta And Lilamani Pokharel sought clarifications from the Finance Minister.

Likewise, National Assembly members seeking clarification from Minister Acharya were Kedar Prasad Neupane, Dev Raj Ghimire, Bir Bahadur Singh, Bachaspati Devkota, Lal Bahadur Biswokarma, Chanda Shaha, Shanta Manavi, Thammaya Thapa and Bishwshwora Dahal.