Minister Sharma instructs subordinate bodies to deliver making a schedule

Kathmandu: Minister for Communications and Information Technology Rekha Sharma has instructed the Ministry's subordinate bodies to work by making a schedule. At the third quarterly progress review of the fiscal year 2023/24 and meeting of the ministerial development action committee on Monday, Minister Sharma also directed to expedite works by increasing the capacity of spending capital expenditure. The Minister claimed that her Ministry witnessed a growth in revenue collection this fiscal year compared to the last one since, she reasoned, it was the result of her firmly standing in favor of good-governance. Expressing her displeasure over lagging behind in work culture among the staffers, she urged the employees in the Ministry and its subordinate bodies to proceed with works by making a schedule and considering self-evaluation. Stating that it was still challenging to increase capital expenditure, Minister Sharma asked the staffers in her Ministry to achieve the targets by working round-the-clock in the remaining days of the current fiscal year. She asserted that the bureaucracy's working style should be improved in order to achieve a rise in the capital expenditure. Sharma shared that the Digital Nepal Acceleration (DNA) project, which is to be implemented in support of the World Bank, had occupied 38 per cent of the Ministry's capital budget and the percentage of the Ministry's capital expenditure had decreased due to the lack of environment to receive the fund from the World Bank. Similarly, Ram Krishna Subedi, Secretary at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, argued that although the revenue collection has gone up, it was a dismay that the capital expenditure had not increased. He spoke of the need to move ahead by reviewing this scenario and called for increasing capital expenditure by working relentlessly as the new fiscal year is due in less than 50 days. Of the total budget allocated to the Ministry, only 36.27 per cent has been spent so far. The current expenditure was rec orded at 47.26 per cent while capital expenditure dismally stood at 5.7 per cent. Likewise, out of Rs 8.7 billion budget allocated to altogether 18 subordinate agencies, only over Rs 3 billion was spent as of mid-April this year. Source: National News Agency RSS