By Laxman Kafle, Kathmandu, Feb. 2: About 170 projects with all necessary requirements have been registered in the National Project Bank (NPB) so far.

The government has formally introduced the concept of NPB from the current fiscal year aiming to allocate essential budget to those ready projects which could go into implementation with the allocated budget.

According to Sushil Bhatta, member of National Planning Commission (NPC), different ministries registered their projects at the project bank, meeting all standards of the project bank.

"Different ministries have registered above 450 projects in the bank through online process. Out of those, about 170 projects have arrived with all necessary information. We asked the concerned ministries to list the projects by maintaining all procedures and information required by the NPB," Bhatta told The Rising Nepal.

Although the ministries and other concerned authorities add the projects to the bank, the NPC verifies the project status and lists them in the bank as ready projects, he said. “We will verify the project status and display them in the bank," he said.

Out of 170 projects registered with all requirements, about 120 are ongoing projects while 50 are new ones, he said, adding that the NPC study their status to decide if they got priority in the budget allocation the next fiscal year.

He said that registration of projects at the NPB would increase in the coming days as the NPC had already urged the concerned ministries to upload the projects to the bank.

Stating that the NPC was actively preparing the procedures along with legal provisions based on the concept of NPB, he expected that the system would come into full-fledged operation by the fiscal year 2022/23.

"The NPC will start screening the projects and analyse their status for their implementation. Based on their status, the projects will be re-prioritised. In turn, the listed projects will get more budget every year,” he said.

According to him, works of the preliminary stage of the project like building online mechanism and preparing guidelines of the project bank has completed.

Currently, the NPC has been working for capacity enhancement of line ministries and in-house employees of NPB for its proper implementation, Bhatta said.

The NPC has initiated procurement for upgrading software and prepared the sectoral guidelines of the project bank by completing the TOR, he said.

The concept of the NPB is to allocate budget for those ready projects which go into implementation immediately, he said, adding that this would help allocate budget for the genuine projects not based on the access to power.

"Lack of set standards to allocate budget in the past resulted in poor capital expenditure. Many projects remain incomplete due to lack of priorities and budget. All these things will be resolved and development process expedited," he said.

Under the NPB, the detailed feasibility study, detailed project report, Environment Impact Assessment, completion of the process of land acquirement and compensation would be verified to identify the projects readied for implementation, he said.

He said that there would be no lack of funds for the projects selected from the bank as the government would forward the projects on the basis of available resources.