Budget Will Respond To Needs: Nepal

At a time when the government is preparing the budget for the fiscal year 2013-14, CHRANJIBI NEPAL, advisor to the Finance Minister, talked to the media about the coming budget. Excerpts:

June 18, 2013, 5:45 p.m. Published in Magazine Issue: Vol: 07 No. -1 June 14- 2013 (Jestha 31, 2070)

What will be the new budget like?

The new budget will not be a populist one. We are not going to throw money here and there.

What does that mean?

The budget will not be distributive. We will allocate the budget in the needed areas. We will allocate enough budget for development of infrastructure like road, hydropower and agriculture. It will be a simple budget.

Will it address the concerns raised by the private sector?

The budget will be private sector friendly. In the last few years, the private sector was not given priority. Our experiences have shown that high growth is impossible without active participation of the private sector. Other challenges are the number of young people leaving the country for foreign employment. You cannot run the country relying on remittances, it is like a slow poison. We must use our youth for our own development. India and China have made economic progress because they guarantee private property.

How do you view the challenges?

Since there are just 300,000 tax payers, it is very difficult to prepare the budget from the tax received from this small group. We need to extend the tax net. We want to achieve high growth rate and it will focus on agriculture and infrastructure sector.

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