Upper House lawmakers show concerns over ‘vague’ words in budget

Concerns have been raised over use of ‘vague’ words in the government annual policies and programmes and in the budget. Each budget has fuzzy sentences like ‘shall be implemented’, ‘shall be prioritised’, ‘shall be stressed’ and the list goes on, according to lawmakers who were airing their views in a meeting of the National Assembly (NA), the Upper House of the Federal Parliament, today.

As they said, such phrasing make the government ‘priorities’ further unclear, raising doubts over their enforcement. The government has been urged to not make the budget a compilation of such vague words. Narayan Dhakal demanded the government incorporate such issues which are implementable in the upcoming budget.

Expressing his concern over the weak implementation of the budget, he urged the government to make the budget a substantive and a real document. He was of the view of minimizing the general expenditures and finding out reasons discouraging the capital expenditure. Likewise, Sharada Devi Bhatta sought the budget allocation of the establishment of a chemical fertilizer factory within the country.

Narayan Dutta Mishra sought the promotion of domestic-manufactured electric vehicles, sufficient supplies of chemical fertilizer and adequate budget to the education and health sectors while Madan Kumari Shah (Garima) drew the government’s attention towards the need of self-sufficient agriculture. She urged the government to further promote energy sector to reduce a huge budget being spent in the energy imports. Government urged to bring budget focusing on economic development Meanwhile, lawmakers speaking in the meeting of the Upper House of the Federal Parliament today expressed happiness over the government determining the priority of the next fiscal year’s budget by focusing on economic development.

They called on the government to especially focus on employment creation, production growth, agriculture, herbs, forests, education and health sectors in the next fiscal year’s budget. They also urged the government to addressing the problems encountered in development and construction works, especially those related to contracts and bidding. Some lawmakers called for allocating the budget to the provinces based on the population and initiating measures to boost up the economy through tourism promotion, hydroelectricity development and wider industrialization. Lawmakers Maya Prasad Sharma, Dil Kumari Thapa Rawal, Kamala Panta, Singha Bahadur Bishwakarma, Mrigendra Kumar Singh Yadav and Shekhar Kumar Singh called for this.

Speaking at the outset of the meeting prior to this, CPN (UML) lawmaker Bhairab Sundar Shrestha called attention of the House saying a lawmaker had made ‘indecent statement’ in the meeting on Sunday and demanded that the said statement be removed from the record. Assembly Chairman Ganesh Prasad Timilsina said that he will take the required decision on this matter only after listening to the Sunday’s said statement.