Rs. 104bn arrears in public offices

By Our Reporter The 58th annual report of the Office of the Auditor-General submitted to President Bidya Devi Bhandari by Auditor General Tanka Mani Sharma on Friday showed that bad governance and corruption have been thriving in the country. Although former Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli claimed to follow 'zero tolerance to corruption', the report of the Auditor General showed the opposite. Moreover, the OAG was not provided with the documents relating to the controversial purchase of health materials through the Omni group.  As the Oli-led government gave protection to the corrupt and resorted to corrupt practices, total arrears in public offices reached about Rs. 104 billion by the end of the last Fiscal Year 2020/21. The 58th annual report of the OAG reported that the country had to recover Rs. 26.4 billion arrears in the last fiscal but only Rs. 6.1 billion was recovered.  According to the report, Rs. 9.7 billion in FY 2017/18, Rs. 7.4 billion in FY 2018/19 and Rs. 6.1 billion in FY 2019/20 was recovered after the Auditor General indicated the arrears in its annual reports.  However, the amount of recovered arrears is continuously going down. According to the 57th Report in 2020 Rs. 7.4 billion was recovered in that year while the amount was Rs. 9.7 billion in 2019. The OAG reports indicate less revenue collection, idle deposits at the treasury, higher payments and expenditures beyond the legal parameters as arrears.  In the last three years, arrears of the federal and provincial offices were gradually decreasing while they are continuously going up at local levels and other organisations and committees.  The size of arrears in the federal government offices has gone down to 2.86 per cent in 2021 from 5.29 per cent in 2019. The amount has also gone down significantly from Rs. 106.3 billion to Rs. 44.3 billion in the past three years.  Likewise, arrears in the provincial offices has decreased to 2.74 per cent from 7.25 per cent, however, in terms of the actual amount it has gone up significantly – from Rs. 19 million in 2019 to Rs. 6.5 billion in 2021.  In terms of local bodies, the size of arrears was 4.22 per cent three years ago which went up to 5 per cent in 2021. But in terms of amount, it increased to Rs. 40.8 billion from Rs. 24.1 billion.  The worst performers in terms of transparency are the other organisations and committees established by the federal and provincial governments. They have about 7.74 per cent of arrears which was Rs. 12.6 billion in the last fiscal.  The OAG has audited a total of 5462 institutions and agencies under various levels of government of which federal ministries and agencies have the lowest arrears in terms of per cent (2.86 per cent) but highest in terms of amount Rs. 44.3 billion. While the provinces have the lowest amount of arrears with Rs. 6.5 billion which makes just 2.74 per cent of the total budget.  The audited amount was Rs. 1555.8 billion of federal agencies, Rs. 237.4 billion of provincial agencies, Rs. 815.9 billion of local bodies. Likewise, Rs. 163.5 billion of 584 committees and other organisations, and Rs. 2555 billion of 81 organised institutions was also audited.  The OAG has commented that the public accountability was poor in terms of budget and project implementation, revenue administration, public property management, fiscal federalism execution and public service dissemination.  According to it, the budget of the subnational bodies is dependant on federal grants and most of their programmes were unproductive and distributor and administrative costs were high.  Deuba proves himself incapable again Nepali Congress president SherBahadurDeubais likely to be incompetent Prime Minister again. It is evident from the fact that he is still unable to expand the Cabinet even nearly one and a half months after his appointment to the top executive post.  Earlier in 2002, King Gyanendrahad dismissed Deuba from the job of PM publicly calling him incompetent.  Later in 2017, he also showed his incompetency while leading an elected government. He was leading the government as the leader of the largest party in the parliament, but in elections, his party suffered a humiliating defeat. Although he was PM and held polls under his leadership, his party won a mere 23 of 165 seats under the first-past-the-post election system, with only two seats in the mountains. His party was nowhere in the position of forming government in all seven provinces.  Although he blamed the unity between the UML and Maoists for the humiliating defeat, it was his poor governance and short-sighted decisions to impeach Chief Justice Sushila Karki, which resulted in the defeat of the ruling party. Now, he was made the PM to safeguard the existing political system and constitution which were under attacks from former PM and UML chairman KP Sharma Oli, who resorted to ordinances to lengthen his stay in power by avoiding the people-elected parliament.  But the initial days of Deuba are not different from Oli. He adjourned the House meeting and introduced an ordinance to breach the UML. He has been unable to make people feel the presence of a new government. Several ministries are without leadership as he has not expanded the Cabinet. He even failed to hold the general convention of the party and has postponed further. Although he managed to resolve the disputes over active membership in the party, he is still unable to sort out differences relating to other issues of the general convention.