KATHMANDU, NOV 17 - In a bid to forge consensus with opposition parties, the government is mulling two options—bringing a one-third budget or going for a full budget excluding any new policies and programmes.
Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai and Finance Minister Barsha Man Pun floated the options, which could be a compromise formula, during their meeting with President Ram Baran Yadav on Friday. The head of state has been pressing the government to garner political consensus for the budget.
The government is scheduled to hold discussions on the issue with opposition parties on Sunday to finalise one of the options.
“Since the government is planning to bring the budget through consensus, it is presenting the two options,” said a source close to Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai. The planned budget, sources suggest, would continue the old policies and programme and pave the way for the government to collect revenues and make expenditures.
According to prime minister’s Political Advisor Devendra Poudel, the government is preparing to bring budget without new policies after President Ram Baran Yadav hinted that he will endorse a budget sans new policies and programmes.
President’s Press Advisor Rajendra Dahal said the government had offered various options so that the budget can be brought through compromise.
“The president has been stressing that there should not be any delay in budget,” said Dahal, adding that “parties were yet to reach consensus over any of the options proposed by the government.”
Maoist leaders claim even the opposition parties Nepali Congress and CPN-UML are positive towards such budget. Earlier, UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal had proposed a budget to  NC President Sushil Koirala.
President Yadav has called the top leaders of major parties on Monday to discuss the issue.  “We have been informed that the preparation for a full budget has been futile as the government has received indications that the President will not endorse such a budget,” said Vice-chairman of National Planning Commission Dipendra Bahadur Kshetry.
On Monday, the government had also deferred its plan to forward a budget ordinance for endorsement to President Yadav. The decision followed a “request” to the government from the President to forge consensus with the opposition on the matter. Finance Minister Pun was all set to hand over the ordinance to the President on Monday.
The NC and UML leaders had been maintaining that besides the budget, they would hold talks on all issues, including change of government. The government had prepared a full budget with a ceiling of Rs 458 billion.
After failing to forge consensus for the full budget, the government on July had presented a partial budget authorising it to spend Rs 161.02 billion for the current fiscal year.
The government allocated Rs 51.29 billion for constitutional bodies, payment of domestic and foreign loans which can be spent for the entire year. Counted as consolidated fund, the budget under this heading does not require parliament’s endorsement.
The government has allocated Rs 109.72 billion as one-third of this year’s expenditure. On the basis of estimated expenditure of Rs 365 billion of fiscal year 2011-12, the one-third budget was fixed by reducing Rs 38 billion which had been spent under consolidated fund.
Finance Ministry sources say regular expenditure of Rs 80 billion has already been spent.  However, only Rs 4 billion of Rs 20 billion capital expenditure has been spent so far.
But the government cannot transfer the unused capital expenditure for salary and other expenses due to which the Finance Ministry will not be able to impart salaries to its 500,000 government officials.
Posted on: 2012-11-18 08:48