The Nepal government is constitutionally obligated to present the budget on Jestha 15. The government, which has been bringing a deficit budget every year, has not been able to fully spend the allocated budget for a long time. The government is obligated to reduce the budget in the mid-term review of all fiscal years. The government is also obligated to spend more than the income. A large part of the budget is being spent on ordinary expenses and foreign debt repayments rather than on development expenses.
This budget for the upcoming fiscal year is being prepared amid a huge imbalance between income and expenditure. There are many expectations in the budget for the upcoming fiscal year amid a long economic crisis and disappointment. In this context, an interview with Arjun Prasad Pokharel, Secretary of the Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation, about the budget for the upcoming fiscal year 2082/083. Edited excerpt:
How is the budget preparation for the upcoming fiscal year going?
The budget preparation work has progressed. Especially while preparing the budget, three important tasks need to be done. The first is the issues related to the ministry that need to be included in the policy and program. We have already sent that. The second is the priority issues of the ministry that need to be included in the budget statement. Since the issue of how to work in the coming year will be important, we have almost prepared for that too. We will probably send it to the Ministry of Finance today.
Third, we have to enter the Line Ministry Budget Information System (LMBIS) within the budget ceiling given to us. We have done that. Now the discussion after this is the budget-related discussion in the Ministry of Finance. The date of the discussion has also been fixed. We will go to the Ministry of Finance for budget-related discussions on the specified date. Which programs are prioritized in the programs we have decided annually, which are not, and how much is included in the ceiling? If the ceiling given to us is not enough, we also take the initiative for additional budget. We also have discussions with the National Planning Commission regarding some development programs, and based on those discussions, we finalize the programs to be included in the budget of this ministry for the next year and some service delivery improvement programs, and those finalized programs are locked in LMBIS.
Then, after the Finance Minister makes the budget statement, the plans are passed. Then, the overall program is made and after the parliament passes the budget, those programs come to the ministry for implementation. Right now, as you said, we are in a hurry to prepare the budget. While the responsibility is to complete the programs for the remaining period of the current fiscal year, we are currently under time pressure because we have to make the programs for the next fiscal year better and face the challenges that have been seen. Right now, we are working without looking at the clock.
What is the expenditure status of the current fiscal year, what was the expenditure status during the same period of the last fiscal year?
The Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation is not a ministry that mobilizes a lot of capital budget. More than 90 percent of our budget has been spent on the current side. Capital expenditure has been 64 percent. Since we have to do ICB of some pro equipment and that is in the process, the expenditure is not visible. Since we have to purchase IT software, a lot of preparation has to be done, except for that, the other annual programs of the ministry are target-oriented. The achievement of what we had said to spend in the June period is good. According to the information received from the plan, we are at 64 percent capital expenditure by the end of the previous month.
What I have told my team is that we should put feasible programs in the budget. We should not put ambitious programs. The government should be ambitious and bring projects. But we, the employees, should put feasible programs. It is not necessary to be enthusiastic while putting programs and create programs that cannot be implemented later and do not make progress. We should deliver results. I have mobilized my team with that in mind. Since we do not have development programs, we will have general programs and service delivery improvement programs, so our expenditure is good. The achievement is also good and satisfactory.
What programs is the ministry going to put forward for the next fiscal year, what are the recurring programs, how much is the estimated budget allocation?
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## We have given more importance to improving service delivery in the priority of the coming year. We have given high priority to the services provided by the Land Revenue and Survey Office. We have given priority to such programs to adopt new technologies in relation to surveying, and in the field of land administration, we have recently revised the guidelines for land and surveying. That is a part of improving service delivery. And in the program of the coming year, we have also given more emphasis to improving service delivery.
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## We have put such programs. Along with this, we have focused more on issues of employee capacity building and orientation of employees on policy-related changes in land, and we have focused on that program to ensure the use of technology in land and surveying, minimize its potential risks, and increase the use of technology.
Cooperatives are also directly linked to this ministry, what plans are being made to address the problems seen in the cooperative sector and provide relief to cooperative victims?
The ministry is working day and night to solve the problems seen in the cooperative sector. Recently, we have also amended the Cooperative Act, 2074 BS. We have made some institutional and some structural arrangements. But when do the people get the results of the work we have done, when do they get relief? So now we are going in that direction. We are focused on providing immediate relief to the people and at what speed we can take the work of the problematic cooperatives to the end.
We have revised the posts of the problematic cooperative management committee to make the work effective. We have given additional posts. We have also given a quick solution to the issues they have put in the ministry. Now, the government has formed the National Cooperative Regulatory Authority and the authority has already started its work. From there, we also study problematic and problem-oriented cooperatives and have increased some police actions, but the issue of whether the people will get relief or not is becoming complicated.
Therefore, we have prioritized those issues for the next fiscal year, considering that we need to manage them further. The ministry is discussing what can be done to provide immediate relief to the people. We will draw conclusions from that discussion. And in the budget for the next fiscal year, we will come up with some topics so that the cooperative victims can experience relief. We are working on the issue of where the government can provide the support required within the scope of the law, and hopefully a budget will come in that amount.
This is a practical point, what is the plan for regulating cooperatives in a policy sense?
When I was the chairman of the National Cooperative Regulatory Authority, I said you should regulate, I would say to abide by discipline. I am not trying to force anyone, I am currently working on how to abide by all of us. How do all organizations abide by discipline? What is meant by discipline is that we do what we say. What that means is that we have to abide by what is regulated in the law. We have to abide by that. The authority is working for that. We have emphasized four things. One, the registration regulation says to register the organization. We are re-registering the institution by submitting all the information to the regulatory authority.
We cannot remain within the rules and regulations made by the government. There is another reporting system. The reporting system has two subjects: forwarding the institution’s data to the higher authority and auditing it. We have said that we will conduct a prudential audit of each institution. Based on that, we analyze the risk of the institution. We bring the institutions at risk back into close monitoring. We also do that in two ways, onside and offside, and put it in the reform framework. If there is no improvement even after reform, we will take it towards cancellation according to the law. We are trying to work on such a system.
Nepal Rastra Bank is already the regulator of financial institutions. We are also looking at its experiences. In order to gain experience from the past practices of the National Bank in this regard, we have placed the Executive Director of the National Bank on the committee of the Authority. Similarly, we have tried to work on these issues by analyzing what has been done in this field at the international level. We cannot manually look at the financial cooperatives scattered across the country, especially credit and savings cooperatives.
Therefore, we have also thought about the software that we need to develop a system. If all the information comes from the software system, we have also prepared for that and have come forward. If we can work on all these things, we will all be disciplined. The problems that we are facing today in the cooperative sector will not arise tomorrow. Now we are also raising the issue of cooperative mergers. Now if there are many cooperatives in the same field of work, they should be merged and the number of cooperatives should be limited. More developed countries have a limited number of cooperatives. We are ready to merge and integrate cooperatives. The government creates an environment for cooperatives to merge and provides incentives. Now we have to work on the financial sector, especially in the cooperative sector, regarding employees.
We work on what kind of qualifications a person should have to be a manager and how much knowledge a cooperative director should have at a minimum. But don’t worry about not having educational qualifications, we give them a one-month orientation. We now teach them how to value assets and how much capital to keep according to international practice. We now strictly monitor their reporting to the body they are registered with, the relevant municipality, the regulatory authority, and the cooperative department, and we keep organizations that do not fulfill their responsibilities prescribed by law under surveillance. We also give them a chance to correct their mistakes, but if there is no other option, we have to take action.
There have been complaints that real estate transactions have not increased as expected in recent years. How does the budget address this issue?
The issue of real estate transactions that you raised is not within the purview of the Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation. We deal with land, not real estate. There are other ministries and other bodies that deal with real estate transactions, but as you said, resolving the problems arising in the allotment, managing exempted lands, and regulating government lands fall within our purview. We will resolve the issues of providing land for building houses and the parameters related to the limits, while the Ministry of Urban Development has been doing the rest. Both these ministries should move forward with good understanding on this issue.
The government must have an idea of what form the business should take. As for the limit you mentioned, we have already done so in accordance with the approved order. The land entrepreneurs get within that order. We have already provided land to those who have met the assessment criteria. It cannot be done to those who have not met the criteria. The Ministry of Finance also looks into tax-related matters in real estate transactions. I want to make it clear to you that what this ministry does is only up to the limit of land availability. We are doing this. I do not think there is a problem with it so far.
There are always problems in budget implementation, how can the budget implementation situation for the next fiscal year be improved?
Programs should not be particularly ambitious. If the staff and financial resources required for the program are not managed, it will fail at the time of formulation. If I imagine and plan a plan with a budget that I do not have, it will fail at first sight. Therefore, my demand is that we only include work that can be done. We must stay within the limits of the available budget. When it comes to budgeting, we should go into reality, not imagination. We are aware of this. We have given priority to only those plans that can be done by analyzing how much we can do with the available budget. We have continuously implemented the technology called Leader in the survey office.
Our other multi-year programs are not that great. We have prioritized systemic reform and service delivery improvement. Two other issues raised this year. We have asked the subordinate departments to make a five-year plan, as we are the ones who distribute houses and our own offices are located in rented land or buildings. They will make a new plan. Another land bank. We have moved forward to implement the land bank from the next fiscal year. Currently, those who have land do not work and those who do not have land do not want to work, so this land bank is very necessary. The ministry is engaged in discussions for this.
Finally, how much budget ceiling has been sent to the Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation for the next fiscal year?
The budget ceiling of this ministry is approximately 7 billion. If we want to put up some projects, it is not possible with that ceiling. We will have to discuss with the Ministry of Finance regarding the projects coming from all the ministries. We have also raised some issues outside the ceiling. We have already included things that need to be included in the budget ceiling. Apart from that, discussions are also being held on the issue of providing relief to land banks and cooperative victims. That will also be addressed in the budget.
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