Kathmandu, May 5
Officials in the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development have expressed their dissatisfaction over the budget ceiling imposed by the Ministry of Finance for the next fiscal year 2020/21.
The Finance Ministry has proposed to allocate Rs 33.18 billion at most to the Agriculture Ministry for this year and requested the latter to prepare plans and programmes accordingly. This ceiling is around 1.62 billion lower than the ministry’s this year’s total budget.
Whereas the ministry wants to introduce ambitious programmes to recover the loss incurred due to the coronavirus outbreak and the minister, Ghana Shyam Bhusal, has his own priorities, the proposed budget is peanuts, an official says.
Bhusal has been arguing that advancing the agriculture sector is a must to manage the workforce of people who will return home from foreign employment after the crisis. Further, a failure to increase agriculture produce likely to result in poverty and famine, he thinks.
However, the officials maintain that the Finance Ministry may revise the ceiling based on suggestions of the stakeholders in the run-up to the final announcement.
