Bagmati Province Minister Criticizes Fragmented Budgeting, Calls for Large-Scale Projects

Makwanpur. Bagmati Province Minister for Economic Affairs and Planning, Prabhat Tamang, has stated that fragmented projects worth 1 million rupees have only added to the province's financial burden. He noted that the past implementation of small and fragmented projects has yielded zero results.

Speaking at the Provincial Assembly meeting on Sunday, Minister Tamang emphasized the need for a result-oriented budget rather than a distributive one for the province's development.

Minister Tamang stated that the budget was revised by exercising the authority under the Financial Procedures Act 2074. According to him, the budget had to be cut by 10 to 50 percent to manage resources for the reconstruction of physical damage caused by the protests on 2082 Bhadra 23 and 24, and to pay off the resulting capital liabilities.

Minister Tamang admitted that there were technical and entry errors in 20 out of 37 budget headings. He mentioned that there are over 1,400 projects under 1 million rupees in the province, which have created a liability of 54 billion rupees. 

He argued that since fragmented budgets do not yield results, projects worth 10 billion rupees under 1 million rupees should be scrapped in favor of launching large projects worth 1 billion rupees in each district.

‘Where 100,000 rupees should have been cut, staff entered 1000 instead of 100, resulting in a 1 million rupee cut. As a minister, I take responsibility for this, and such errors will be corrected,’ he said. ‘It takes 60 million rupees to complete a water supply project, but we only allocate 1 million rupees per year. At this rate, it would take 100 years to finish a project.’

Minister Tamang announced that a report on administrative restructuring has been prepared to reduce the provincial government's expenditure. He stated that plans to reduce the number of ministries, revise service centers, and cut staff to reduce administrative burden will be made public this week.