The first full-fledged federal budget presented recently in the parliament has tried to adopt a new approach to bolster the economy. It prioritizes employment generation, entrepreneurship development and optimizing industrial outputs for boosting the economic growth.  Progressive tax policy and allocation of a third of federal budget for the provinces and local levels are other economy friendly provisions stipulated by the budget.

While presenting it, the technocrat finance minister Dr Yuba Raj Khatiwada has also said that the government will carry forward some of the past development projects. This is also something good in terms of the socio-economic growth. In fact, this year’s budget, unlike its previous versions, has not announced big populist programmes, and appears realistic about what the government can deliver in a year.

Nevertheless, there are some serious drawbacks in it. Firstly, the budget is bereft of any innovative measure to spur foreign investment and expand tax base here in the country.   Secondly, its ambitious targets of achieving 33 percent growth in revenue collection and eight percent economic growth are not backed by concrete policies.

Until and unless some of the anomalies in the governance system are addressed, the dreams of attracting adequate foreign investment and bolstering economic growth will continue to remain elusive.

 

On the other side, the budget has announced to allocate 40 million rupees for each constituency despite huge public outcry against it.  Past experiences clearly the money meant for this was blatantly misused by a lot of lawmakers.

Anyway, it behooves the government to ensure strict implementation of the budget. The finance minister should do away with the malaise of the failure to spend development budgets.  With a two-thirds majority in the parliament, the government    is in a convenient position to fulfill what it has promised to the people in the budget. Hopefully it will not stray from its duties in any case.