KATHMANDU: The government has managed to spend merely 4.28% of the allocated capital budget for the 2020-21 21, thanks to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which has disturbed development works and the inability of the government to break the tradition of wise capital budget spending from the beginning months of the fiscal year.
The statistics maintained by the Financial Comptroller General Office (FCGO) shows that capital budget spending till mid-October stands at Rs 15.04 billion or 4.28% of Rs 352.9 billion allotted as capital budget for the current fiscal year.
Similarly, the government has managed to spend 19.27% of the allocated recurrent budget and 1.98% of the refinancing budget till mid-October.
Overall spending of the budget (capital, recurrent and financing) stands at 18.65% of Rs 1.47 trillion budget for 2020-21.
Owing to the slow pace of development activities since spread of the pandemic in March, the government’s development expenditure is likely to be even lower compared to the development budget that was spent in fiscal 2014-15 when the country witnessed a devastating earthquake and in 2015-16 due to supply disruption in the southern border.