Govt. performs better in annual expenditure compared to last FY

By Ajay Chhetri, Kathmandu, Apr. 21: The federal government is found to have performed better in accomplishing annual expenditure target although it has been able to spend only a half of the annual expenditure target in 9 months of the current fiscal year (FY).

By the end of mid-April, the government has spent 50.17 per cent of its annual target which is slightly above the previous FY expenditure.

The Financial Comptroller General Office (FCGO) data revealed that the total expenditure of Rs. 824.7 billion has been made till the mid-April which is marginally better than Rs. 734.4 in the same period of the previous FY.

In order to surpass the total annual expenditure of Rs. 1091.1 billion of the previous FY, the government needs to spend Rs 266.43 billion in the last quarter before the end of the current FY.

 The FCGO 2019/20 annual report revealed that an average total spending from the FY 2015/16 to 2019/20 amounted to 78.76 per cent.

The total outlay of the current FY showed that 60.26 per cent is spent to cover recurrent expenditure, followed by 38.1 per cent for financial expenditure. Meanwhile, the capital expenditure accounted for 28.02 per cent spending thus far.

Expenditure outlook of the FCGO annual report in 2019/20 showed that the  general public service and economic affairs covered a large chunk of the recurrent and capital expenditure from the annual budgetary outlay. On the average, 36.51 per cent had been spent on general public service from FY 2015/16 to 2019/20. Following this, 30.91 per cent on average is spent on economic affairs.

Average spending on education comprised of 7.79 per cent during these years. The government spending on education has drastically declined over these FYs. In the FY 2015/16, government expenditure accounted for 15.09 per cent of the total outlay. However, it sharply declined to 3.61 per cent in 2019/20.

The average health related spending comprised of 4.26 per cent from FY 2015/16 to FY 2019/20.  However, the health-related expenditure in the current FY is expected to be rise due to the rapid vaccination program of the government.

Social security on an average comprised of 4.3 per cent of the total expenditure. It slightly went up from 3.35 per cent in 2015/16 to 6.13 per cent in 2019/20.

Financial expenditure remained the significant pie in the total outlay of the government. The FCGO data revealed that government has spent 38.1 to incurred financial expenditure of total of Rs 189.4 billion in the current FY.

Out of this amount the government, has allocated Rs 48.3 billion for repayment of internal debt and Rs 35 billion for the foreign debt (multilateral and bilateral). In this, government has allocated Rs 44.4 billion of recurrent expenditure to manage public debt.