The interim election government’s Finance Minister Shankar Koirala presented the third and final tranche of this year’s budget early this week.

 And his ending sentence was ‘don’t expect too much from this.’

 He, in fact, stated that the main objective of this government being the holding of CA election, the budget would also focus on that.

 The budget set aside Rs 6 billion for the election and additional Rs 8 billion for covering election-related security expenditure.

Budget in Figures

The total outlay of the budget has been set at Rs 404 billion. “Of the total outlay, Rs 279 billion has been allocated for meeting current expenditure, Rs 66 billion for meeting capital expenditure and nearly Rs 60 billion for meeting other financial provisions,” said Finance Minister Shankar Koirala.

 The budget aims to mobilize Rs 290 billion as revenue to meet the budget liabilities. Likewise, around Rs 50 billion will be raised through payment of principles and foreign grants.

 The budget deficit of Rs 64 billion will be covered through the foreign loans of Rs 26 billion and internal borrowings of Rs 34 billion.

 The budget expects the GDP growth to come down to around 3.6 percent this fiscal.

 The agricultural growth is estimated at lowly 1.3 percent.

 The budget also revealed a dangerous trade deficit level. In the past eight months of the current fiscal year, the country’s exports totalled Rs 50 billion while its imports totalled a whopping Rs 360 billion. A huge gap of over Rs 300 billion.