Difficult to achieve budget target: opposition party leaders

The opposition parties have not shown confidence over the government for achieving its budget targets.

In today’s meeting of House of Representatives convened to discuss on the newly launched budget for fiscal year 2020/21, major opposition party Nepali Congress parliamentarian Prakashman Singh blamed that the government had not paid attention towards minimizing the effect of COVID-19 while presenting the budget.

Singh commented that by the looks of things regarding the budget for upcoming fiscal year, the government did not seem to have considered the recommendations furnished by the Public Expenditure Review Committee. Furthermore, he asserted that the budget did not take into account reducing the unproductive expenditure and completing the national pride projects as well as mega projects.

Stating that although the Prime Minister himself took the responsibility of overseeing construction progress, the former Deputy Prime Minister viewed that it was not so convincing to see government that it would start the second phase of construction of the project while the first phase was not completed yet.

He expressed doubt that the construction on 400-KV transmission line from Lapsefedi to Ratamate would be materialized citing the differing views on this project in the ruling party Nepal Communist Party.

Rastriya Janata Party’s Rajendra Mahato claimed that the newly launched budget was not in favour of the public. “It is centered on fulfilling the interest of the ruling party alone,” he blamed.

According to him, the government had not included relief packages to those suffering worst in the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, he vented his ire at the government for not launching programmes for the poor and daily wage earners.

He also went on to say that the government was oblivious of the fact that the country has already implemented federal set up and it had not fairly and evenly distributed the resources to the States.