Bagmati Budget full of piecemeal projects

By Anil Parajuli,Hetauda, Nov. 10: The Bagmati Province government has allocated Rs. 67.47 billion budget in the current fiscal year 2025/26 for several local road improvement and infrastructure projects in Chitwan district.

However, these projects, though included in the budget, are not registered in the official “Project Bank,” raising questions about the budget allocation process.

It is said that when allocating budget to a project, the project should be listed in the project bank. The Bagmati Province government also established the project bank with the objective of making the plan formulation and selection system factual and reasonable. 

However, the implementation has not been carried out according to the objective for which the project bank was started. 

The role of the project bank has been weakened due to the dominance of the leaders in budget allocation, influence and access.

The project bank has become limited to paper as the Provincial Project Bank Management Information System (PPBMIS), which was launched seven months ago to operate the project bank, has not been implemented in practice. 

As the provincial thematic ministries continue to enter plans and budgets only through the Provincial and Line Ministries Budget Information System (PLMBIS) during budget implementation, the PPBMIS system of the project bank has not been brought into use.

According to Achyut Prasad Upadhyay, spokesperson for the Provincial Policy and Planning Commission, Bagmati Province, there is no coordination between the project bank and the ministry's software. 

He said, "Plans are entered on both sides, but the situation still persists that decisions are not made based on the projects entered in the project bank during the budget implementation phase. Therefore, even though the project bank system has been established, it has not been implemented."

The provincial government had issued the 'Project Bank Management Information System Operation Guidelines, 2080' and made arrangements to include only projects costing more than Rs. 5 million for new infrastructure development projects and more than Rs. 2.5 million for non-infrastructure programmes. 

However, in practice, it has been found that the provincial government has allocated budgets by naming small, fragmented and individual projects.

It has been found that budget allocation has been made by specifying the name and home address of the person in the projects implemented by various infrastructure development offices in Lalitpur, Kavrepalanchowk and Kathmandu.  Most of these projects are worth Rs. 1 million.

Although the provincial government established a project bank twice—once in 2075 B.S. and again in 2079 B.S.—the main objective of the project bank, which entered its third phase of implementation in Chaitra 2081, was to streamline the budgeting process and make project selection transparent and effective. 

However, political interference and ad-hoc tendencies have made its implementation challenging.

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Planning, there are 13,981 projects worth up to Rs. 1 million in Bagmati Province. 

These projects are small schemes of a level that is insufficient even for the ward office. 

The largest number of projects in the current fiscal year's budget are under the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure Development. About 4,576 projects are included under this ministry.

Similarly, there are 4,536 projects under the Ministry of Water Supply, Energy and Irrigation. It seems that about half of the provincial projects are concentrated in these two ministries alone.

The fewest projects are under the Ministry of Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation, with 106.

Although the provincial commission prepared the policy after research and extensive discussions with a team of experts, the policy and programme have not been reflected in the budget due to the tradition of giving the responsibility for project selection to parties and parliamentarians, said Dr. Ganga Datta Nepal, former vice-chairman of the Provincial Policy and Planning Commission, Bagmati Province.

"It seems that the MPs have brought small projects worth Rs. 500,000 to Rs. 1,000,000 based on the houses and settlements in their constituencies and election promises, but what was written in the policy did not make it into the budget," said Dr. Nepal. 

According to him, the commission had started a project bank to control such problems.

Similarly, Prahlad Lamichhane, former member of the Provincial Policy and Planning Commission, said that without a technical cost assessment, it is uncertain how far the road projects will extend during implementation.

He remarked that the current state of budget allocation shows violations of the principles of priority, necessity, and transparency in project selection, with funds being directly accessed by those with influence and intermediaries. 

He added that the project bank, introduced seven months ago, has not yet been used in the implementation process.

According to the Provincial Policy and Planning Commission, Bagmati Province, a total of 3,422 projects have been entered into the project bank so far. Of these, 722 have been approved by the concerned ministries, while 338 have been sent back with objections.

Spokesperson Upadhyay said that of the projects entered in the project bank, 98.9 per cent fall under the physical infrastructure sector, while the number of projects in the social sector remains very low.