KATHMANDU, June 25: Five out of the six metropolitan cities of the country have made public the budget of more than Rs 37 billion for the fiscal year 2021/22.
The Lalitpur Municipality has not made the budget public due to internal disputes.
KMC allocates Rs 1 billion budget to make Kathmandu 'dust-free’
The federal and provincial governments have already brought the budget for the new fiscal year. The law stipulates that the local level should make the budget public by June 29. Accordingly, the municipalities have brought the budget on June 24. Of the five metropolitan cities, Kathmandu has the largest budget and Birgunj has the smallest budget.
Looking at the budgets made public by the metropolises, there is more budget allocation in the heading of capital expenditure than the recurrent expenditure. The Biratnagar Metropolitan City has historically allocated 89 percent of the total budget under capital heading. The metropolis has brought a budget of Rs 4.10 billion for the FY 2021/22 of which Rs 3.58 billion has been allocated under capital heading.
Similarly, Pokhara has allocated 53 percent in the capital heading and Birgunj has 45 percent budget under capital building. Kathmandu and Bharatpur Metropolitan Cities, on the other hand, have not allocated budget and recurrent capital expenditure, separately. The largest share of the resources estimated by the metropolises for the upcoming fiscal year is from various types of grants coming from the federal governments and the provinces. Similarly, metropolitan cities have announced to mobilize more internal resources than in the past.
