Thursday, July 2, 2009

NC protests Finance Ministry's fiscal indiscipline

The Finance Ministry has distributed around Rs 560 million in the last month of the current fiscal year. A group of Nepali Congress (NC) Constituent Assembly (CA) members today remonstrated with Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal over the Finance Ministry's distribution of Rs 560 million in the last month of the current fiscal year, saying they feared embezzlement of funds.
"We have complained to the PM about the possible embezzlement of funds as the money was distributed at the fag-end of the fiscal year," said an NC Constituent Assembly member. He added that the PM mereley came back at them with that he had no inkling of the distribution of the budget at the end of the fiscal year. "The budget has been distributed according to the all-party consensus," the PM said.
However, the Nepali Congress CA members said there was no such consensus and that the decision was arbitrary.
The fund was distributed at the request of some of the CPN-UML's CA members. "However, the ministry of Local Development has not approved any projects at the end of the fiscal year," the NC CA member said adding that the trend of the fund distribution arbitrarily would lead to fiscal indiscipline.
Dr Baburam Bhattarai has also been accused of distributing Rs 1.10 billion while leaving the office. "The present finance minister Surendra Pandey is following in the footsteps of Dr Bhattarai and creating fiscal indiscipline at the end of the fiscal year," the NC CA members alleged.

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