The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the economy hard but opened doors for the government to draw a clear regulation on ‘realistic spending’ of the yearly national budget for all times to come. Eminent Member Phuntsho Rapten shared this at the National Council today.
The Eminent Member said while the government has allocated a limited budget that the country has for various agencies, what matters now is how wisely the budget will be spent.
He said if the Royal Audit Authority (RAA), Gross National Happiness Commission (GNHC) and the Finance Ministry work collaboratively and carry out timely and periodic monitoring, it will ensure the budgets allocated are put to best use.
“RAA annually conducts audit for all budgetary agencies, and recommends a way forward in its annual reports but everyone knows how many agencies actually implement those recommendations. In order to spend the money, there should be plans, which the GNHC draws and the finance ministry allocates the budget accordingly. If these three agencies, in the next two years, collaboratively draw a clear regulation on realistic spending we can have enough to spend on what matters most,” said Phuntsho Rapten, an Eminent Member of the National Council.
He said going by the RAA’s annual reports, millions were spent irrationally and even put to waste by various agencies in the past years and shared that the country cannot afford to repeat such irrational spending now given the economic uncertainties presented by the pandemic.
And according to the RAA’s annual report 2019, unresolved irregularities among various budgetary agencies accounted for more than Nu 600 M in 2018 up from Nu 400 M in 2017.
The government has allocated Nu 74bn as a National Budget for 2020-2021 of which close to Nu 33bn is recurrent budget and more than Nu 36bn is the capital budget. As the country’s domestic revenue is expected to drop by 14 per cent, the government has also proposed seven temporary fiscal measures to meet recurrent expenditures from internal resources.
Phub Gyem & Sonam Pem
