Government Reduces Federal Ministries from 22 to 18

Kathmandu. With the main objective of maintaining administrative reform and frugality, reducing unnecessary current expenditure, and making the work performance more effective and swift, the government has decided to reduce the number of federal ministries from 22 to 18. The Council of Ministers meeting held today approved the 'Government of Nepal (Work Allocation) Regulations, 2083' and made this decision to reduce the number of ministries.

According to Prime Minister Balen Shah's Press and Research Expert Deepa Dahal, the government has kept the Ministries of Finance, Home, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs as they are. Similarly, the Ministries of Industry, Commerce and Supplies, Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, and Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation also remain as they are.

Prioritizing technology and innovation, the government has separated science/technology from the former Ministry of Education and formed a separate 'Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation' to look after new innovation-related tasks.

Extensive changes have been made in the work allocation of other ministries, and ministries of similar nature have been integrated. Accordingly, there will now be the Ministry of Education and Sports, Ministry of Communications, Ministry of Youth, Labor and Employment, and Ministry of Land, Cooperatives and Rural Development.

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Similarly, the Ministry of Women, Children, Gender and Sexual Minorities and Social Security, Ministry of Health and Food Security, Ministry of Infrastructure Development, and Ministry of Agriculture, Forest and Environment have been formed.

The work related to information technology, which was previously done by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, has now been merged into the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers.

Under the '100-Point Agenda for Administrative Reform' issued immediately after the formation of the new government, a plan was put forward to review the number of ministries for administrative reform and cost reduction.

Dahal informed that the work allocation, name changes, and integration of ministries have been done based on the report submitted by the 'Restructuring Management Secretariat' formed under the convenership of Secretary Govinda Bahadur Karki to implement that plan.

The government states that this step has been taken to solve the problem of increased current expenditure due to the number of ministries being larger than necessary and to make the state mechanism efficient.