KATHMANDU: Minister for Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation, Physical Infrastructure and Transport, and Urban Development, Kulman Ghising, has said that the government-wide budget freeze is the main reason behind low capital expenditure in the first quarter of the current fiscal year.
Speaking at the meeting of the National Assembly’s Committee on Public Policy and Delegated Legislation on Monday, Minister Ghising clarified that projects under his three ministries were heavily affected as a combined budget of Rs 195 billion remained frozen.
He noted that the Urban Development Ministry alone has around Rs 61 billion locked, which significantly slowed progress. “If we calculate progress after excluding the frozen budget, our achievement would exceed 20 percent. The current low expenditure is not due to poor performance, but because of the budget freeze,” he said. He added that the first quarter generally records slow progress, further hampered this year by the Gen-Z movement, which disrupted project work nationwide.
Minister Ghising listed the Gen-Z protests and work stoppages at key project sites as the second major obstacles after the budget freeze. He informed the committee that strict action has begun against non-performing contractors, with 49 contracts officially terminated so far out of 269 projects under the process of cancellation.
Admitting that some projects were included in the budget haphazardly, he expressed support for removing such allocations and redirecting resources toward critical infrastructure in remote districts like Jumla and Humla. “We are in constant discussion with the Finance Ministry and the Prime Minister on resolving these issues,” he said.
Ghising also informed the committee that reconstruction-related design and construction processes are progressing rapidly. He said long-term and some short-term projects in energy, irrigation, roads and urban development will now move ahead at an accelerated pace.
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