When Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba started reading out the proposed budget in a live broadcast, your Beed asked three questions. First, when Nepal is reeling under a financial crisis and there is no Finance Minister, can the prime minister do justice to this portfolio? Second, what is the legitimacy of a budget presented by a government whose fate hangs in a court of law? Finally, how do we judge the authenticity of statements made by a person who isn't even sure what, if any, party he legally belongs to? And yet, we went through the motions, as we always do. There were comments in the media, discussions at the Reporter's Club, reactions from people belonging to the Nepal's self-proclaimed Intellectual Brigade. Make no mistake, interesting or not, worth the waste of breath or not, the budget will remain an issue in all the print media this week, this month and, if we are especially unlucky, this quarter, before it is forgotten. As this Beed never tires of repeating: the budget is merely another opportunity for fun and games in our already festivity-filled calendar.
Over the years the budget has well and truly lost all importance-it is simply another drag of a document that needs to be ploddingly produced and droningly read out, and disinterestedly commented upon. This year the promulgation of the new Income Tax Act on April Fools Day made it amply clear that, if it had its way, the government would rather deal with fiscal and economic matters in a piecemeal fashion, rather than wait in a disciplined fashion for the Finance Bill. Over the years it has become so common for the government to levy surcharges and duties, and make changes in the tax structure at any given point in time, that from the revenue perspective, the budget is pretty immaterial. And then there is the matter of how the tax collection offices function-the reality there has little to do with the intents and purposes of the budget.
On the expenditure side we have been stepping gingerly into the transition from the Ninth to the Tenth Five Year Plan, the Medium Term Expenditure Framework and the three-year rolling budgetary system. But more important than these are the Country Assistance Strategies and Plans of various multi-lateral and bi-lateral agencies that operate in Nepal. There is no way to ensure that these dovetail with the annual budget of the country. Our budget philosophy remains restricted to pondering the elusive percentage changes and the pre-historic distinction between regular and development expenditure.
In a country where parties fight elections on the basis of in-your-wildest-dreams wishlists such as election manifestoes, the budget, too, has come to resemble one of those fairytale boons. Successive governments and parties in the opposition have not made any effort to ensure the efficacy of the budgets or change the process by which budgets are monitored and controlled. A budget is as useless a document as an election manifesto if it is not properly monitored and reviewed to reflect realism, practicality and flexibility.
In any case, the budget has no relation to Nepal's major economic activities. Most of the aid that this country receives is not factored into the official accounting systems, and most businesses have perfected the art of slipping out of the tax net. This country survives on foreign remittances, but does not even legitimise them, let alone acknowledge them as a major source of revenue. Until all of these elements are together worth more than the total outlay announced in the budget, what purpose can that document possibly serve?
Okay, maybe there is no point blaming the government or the opposition. But what about people like us? Why don't we, the real stakeholders in this country, stand up and ask for credible plans, and realistic policies? Taxpayers keep paying taxes and donors keep funding Nepal despite all these problems with planning, accountability and responsibility. Stopping either of these is clearly not a solution. Perhaps the real, basic change that we need is doing away with budgetary systems and controls.
