By Our Reporter Revenue collection has been less than the government expenditure during the first five months of the current fiscal year. According to the data of the Financial Comptroller General Office, the recurrent expenditure of the government is higher than revenue collection in the first five months of the current fiscal year. The revenue collection is 23.48 per cent of the annual target while the recurrent expenditure (administrative expenditure) has reached 30.22 per cent. The country faced a revenue deficit for the first time this fiscal year. The revenue collection of the government stood at Rs. 329.46 billion while recurrent expenditure stood at Rs. 357.5 billion by December 16, 2022. Around Rs. 303.9 billion has been raised from the tax revenue and Rs. 25.4 billion from non-tax revenue during the review period. The government has set a target to collect revenue of Rs. 1,403.1 billion. The government had allocated Rs. 1,183.2 billion in the heading of recurrent expenditure for the last fiscal year. The government's tax revenue collection is 23.46 per cent (Rs. 303.9 billion) of the target while non-tax revenue collection is 23.66 per cent (Rs. 25.4 billion). The government ban imposed on the import of various goods is blamed for the poor revenue collection. Due to a lack of foreign currency reserves and liquidity, the government banned the import of various goods from April 26, 2022. But the government has recently lifted the restriction on the import of these goods. The total budget expenditure of the government was Rs. 438.7 billion, which is 24.46 per cent of the total allocated budget. The government had allocated a budget of Rs. 1,793.8 billion for the current fiscal year. During the review period, the capital expenditure of the government has also remained low. The capital expenditure stood only at 9 per cent of the total allocation during the first five months of the current fiscal year. Of the Rs. 380.3 billion allocated under capital expenditure, only Rs. 34.2 billion has been spent so far. Similarly, out of the Rs. 230.3 billion allocated for financial management, only 20.4 per cent (Rs. 46.9 million) has been spent, according to statistics. The rate of capital expenditure is low even after five months of the current fiscal year which indicates that the government failed to expedite development works rapidly even when the budget was unveiled in time. As the capital budget is the source of economic development, in a country like Nepal, there will be low capital budget allocation and because that too will not be spent, economic development and high economic growth will not be possible to achieve.