The Finance Ministry, which has revised capital expenditure target to Rs 75.03 billion against the original target of Rs 85 billion, has to spend Rs 55 billion in the next four months. Only Rs 19.67 billion has been spent as of the eighth month of this fiscal year. The amount allocated for the remaining four months is nearly three times the amount allocated for the first eight months.

“There is a tendency of spending late, which has affected the quality of work,” said Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat. “Development work must be completed by mid-June.”

Addressing secretaries of eight ministries, he told them not to ask additional budget without spending the available resources. “Better bring a proposal to transfer the budget to better-spending projects,” he said.

According to Ram Sharan Pudashaini, head of monitoring and evaluation department at the ministry, said his ministry has already spent 85 percent of the allocated capital budget. The ministry was sanctioned Rs 690 million in capital expenditure budget.

In terms of the percentage of expenditure, the Ministry of Industry (MoI) has become the lowest spender. In the past eight months, the ministry has spent just 12.57 percent of the allocated budget of Rs 1.59 billion.

“MoI has spent just Rs 200 million,” said Pudashaini. “Budget allocated for Micro Enterprises Development Project and Industrial Infrastructure Development Programme has also not been spent well.”

Progress made by ministries including education, health and population, federal affairs and local development, land reforms and management, industry, agriculture development, science, technology and environment and forest conservation was reviewed in the presence of the Finance Minister on Monday.

Of the eight ministries, Agriculture Development Ministry (Rs 2.5 billion) and Federal Affairs and Local Development Ministry (Rs 3.5 billion) are the top budget receivers. The two ministries have been able to spent just 20 and 25 percent of the budget, respectively.