The Ministry of Finance believes that the timely implementation of the budget is still a big challenge. The Finance Department of the Ministry of Finance said that the lack of proper planning in terms of efficiency, capacity, revenue collection and public expenditure is a major obstacle in the implementation of the budget. In this situation, several instructions have been given to the concerned ministries in the implementation of the budget.
According to sources, although the ministries, departments and other institutions have achieved sufficient efficiency in setting annual targets, timely and fair budget implementation is still a major challenge. One of the main reasons for imbalance between government revenue and expenditure is lack of proper planning in terms of revenue collection and expenditure of government funds. Budget implementation of various ministries-departments and other organizations is usually slow in the beginning of the financial year. Similarly, slowness in revenue collection can be observed at the beginning of the financial year.
Recently, this has been stated in a circular titled ‘Budget Implementation Plan Formulation and Implementation Progress Monitoring’ issued by the Finance Department.
According to the circular, government employees have lower expenditure compared to all other items except salaries and allowances. Actions are taken towards the end of the financial year especially in the payment of various utility bills, maintenance of repairs, construction and completion works and procurement of goods. As a result, it is not possible to ensure the quality of government expenditure in many cases. In addition, at the end of the year, the government has to take responsibility for the unplanned debt. As a result financial discipline cannot be ensured. In this situation, if it is possible to take advance planning and implement it in order to implement the budget properly and on time, it is possible to avoid unplanned government debt and reduce the debt related expenses of the government to a significant extent.
In this situation, the Finance Department of the Ministry of Finance has instructed every ministry and department to adopt a quarterly (three months) budget implementation plan at the beginning of the financial year to ensure proper implementation of the budget, properly implement it and monitor the progress of budget implementation on a quarterly basis in the budget management committee meeting.
For this purpose, the ministries and departments have been asked to send their budget implementation plans to the finance department by October 27. The finance department has also created various forms for planning and reporting. Besides, the budget implementation monitoring report has been asked to be sent to the finance department within one month after the end of each quarter.
A review of the data of the Budget and Finance Department shows that it is generally not possible to implement the entire budget in any financial year. Even the revised budget is not fully implemented. An average of 81 percent of the original budget and an average of 87 percent of the revised budget have been implemented in the last five years.
It is said in the circular that every year some new policies, programs and activities are announced in the budget. Some of the activities announced in the last three years are still under implementation. Apart from this, some activities have been announced in the current budget as well. In order to implement them in a timely and orderly manner, instructions have been given to take the implementation plan using the given form.
The circular has asked to set quarterly targets based on targets set against various items with emphasis on revenue generation. If there is a record of seasonal decline in revenue collection of an item, revenue collection targets against the respective item should be taken into consideration.
In relation to the expenditure plan, the circular says that against all other items including salaries and allowances of government officials and employees, the expenditure shall be determined at a proportional rate every three months. However, in this case, the increased (annual increment) salary of the employees should be taken into consideration. Besides, within the third week of every month, all government utility bills of the previous month must be paid and for this purpose, the required amount must be shown in every quarter. Similarly, for other items included in the supply and services sector, the allocation should be determined on a three-month basis taking into account the expenditure pattern of the previous years.
Repair and conservation work of all types of government works should be started from the first quarter of the financial year. So that the balance is maintained in the payment of bills for these works in different quarters and the pressure of payment of excessive amounts in the last quarter of the financial year is not created.
In case of procurement and procurement of assets, a ‘procurement plan’ for procurement of goods and services should be prepared under both operating and development budgets. According to this plan, the amount required to be paid every quarter should be properly reflected in the expenditure plan.
As foreign grant and loan collection funds are generally disbursed in four equal installments in four quarters of the fiscal year, the circular asked to set targets accordingly.
The finance department feels that if the instructions given by this department are properly followed, the speed of budget implementation will increase a lot.
(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = ”
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));