By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Sept. 26: The government income and expenditure has witnessed a vast difference in the first 70 days of the current fiscal year 2021/22.
About Rs. 185.46 billion revenue is collected by the government while the expenditure is just Rs. 97.4 billion. The income is 16.1 per cent of the annual estimate of Rs. 1151.6 billion while the expenditure is 5.91 per cent of the total budget of Rs. 1647.57, according to the statistics of the Financial Comptroller General Office (FCGO).

Of the total income received by the government, Rs. 165.05 billion is tax revenue and Rs. 20.4 billion is non-tax revenue. Likewise, it collected Rs. 16.79 billion as ‘other receipts’.
In terms of expenditure, Rs. 63.87 is recurrent and Rs. 2.79 billion capital expense while Rs. 30 billion is spent on financing.

Mobilisation of the capital budget has remained very poor in the past period of more than two months with just 0.64 per cent spending of the total Rs. 435.2 billion development allocation.
Change in the government immediately after the announcement of the budget by the previous government and Supreme Court’s ruling to void the budget presented through ordinance had delayed the implementation of the budget.

Finance Minister Janardan Sharma presented a replacement bill at the parliament two weeks ago which was passed amidst a mayhem as the main opposition CPN (UML) was protesting against the Speaker of the House, Agni Prasad Sapkota.
Meanwhile, the country witnessed a government ‘shutdown’ for a week as the budget ordinance was not passed within 60 days after being tabled.

However, FM Sharma has promised to increase the capital expenditure with about 10 per cent budget mobilisation every month. He also said that a mechanism to expedite the development work and monitor spending would be formed soon. Lower spending would directly affect the economic growth projection which is set at 7 per cent for the current fiscal year.