KATHMANDU: First three months of the current fiscal year (2020-21) have witnessed the lowest capital expenditure in the last four years.
As per the statistics maintained by the Ministry of Finance (MoF), the government has managed to spend Rs 15.05 billion capital budget till mid-October this year. In 2016-17, the government had spent Rs 10. 66 billion capital budget in the first quarter of the fiscal year. Since then, this is the lowest capital budget expenditure in the first quarter in following years.
Although capital expenditure was expected to increase from the beginning of the fiscal year as the budget disbursement and contract processes had been eased, development budget expenditure still seem sluggish.
Officials at the Ministry of Finance informed that budget spending this year has been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and other difficult circumstances resulted by the crisis.
Although capital expenditure has been low for the last four years, current expenditure has been steadily increasing.
The government had spent Rs 117 billion in the first three months of 2016-17 under current expenditure while has spent Rs 182 billion this year.