Former FMs flay government move for budget san consensus

Former finance ministers have warned the government´s attempt to announce budget for the current fiscal year 2012/13 without a political consensus would invite confrontation in the country.
"Government has no authority to bring the budget unilaterally in the absence of parliament to ensure accountability in budget spending. Prime Minister should shun his personal ´ego´ and let the country move forward through consensus budget,” said former Finance Minister Mahesh Acharya.
Speaking in an interaction in the capital on Sunday, former finance ministers had questioned the government´s intention to bring out budget unilaterally. "Announcing national budget unilaterally shows the government´s intention to ignore the constitution writing process by creating conflict among political forces,” said Acharya, who is also a central working committee member of Nepali Congress.
He stressed on the need to strengthen the politics of consensus at a time when parliament does not exist in the country.
"There is an absence of parliament in the country to make government -- the executive body -- accountable for its activities. But the government is leading the country towards a crisis by moving ahead in an unilateral way and ignoring the other forces," added Acharya.
Similarly, Surendra Pandey, former Finance Minister also echoed similar views.
"We won´t be involved in the process of brining the budget without political consensus. Undermining the significance of political consensus, the UCPN (Maoist) is instead resorting to threaten the president to endorse the budget proposed by the present government unilaterally,” said Pandey, who is also politburo member of the CPN-UML.
The government had brought one-third budget for the current fiscal year through ordinance in July. The caretaker government, which dissolved the Constituent Assembly in last May without drafting a constitution, is constantly pushing to bring the full-fledged budget for the current fiscal year.
Finance Minister Barsha Man Pun had asked all the political parties to send a representative in the budget drafting process as per the instruction of Prime Minister Babu Ram Bhattarai. "There is no emergency to bring the budget now. We still have one month to forge consensus to bring the budget,” Pandey said.
Dr Prakash Chandra Lohani also suggested President Ram Baran yadav not to endorse the budget ordinance. "There is a risk of setting a wrong precedence while endorsing ordinance of budget at this time," Lohani, who is co-chairman of Rastriya Janasakti Party, said.
Finance Minister Pun requests Khanal to lobby for consensus
KATHMANDU (REPUBLICA) - Finance Minister Barsha Man Pun has sought help from Jhala Nath Khanal, chairman of CPN-UML to build an environment for political consensus to bring full-fledged budget for this fiscal year.
According to Pun´s press coordinator Manoj Garti Magar, Pun met Khanal at latter´s residence in Dallu on Sunday evening to request the former Prime Minister to lobby for political consensus for budget.
Khanal assured his cooperation to create an environment for announcing consensus budget. Khanal also suggested Pun to intensify parley with top leaders of other parties to secure support from them for the full-fledged budget.

Private sector to exert pressure for full budget

Saying that the lack of full budget has seriously hurt business activities and people´s development aspirations, the business community has decided to spearhead an ´aggressive campaign´ from Wednesday in a bid to exert pressure on the political parties to forge consensus for early announcement of the full-fledged budget.
“We will mobilize all sections of the society and would use all available ´tools´ to pressurize all the political parties, including those in the opposition, for the earliest announcement of full budget,” said Bhaskar Rajkarnikar, senior vice-president of Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI).
The FNCCI decided to launch the pressure campaign after representatives from different business sectors such as manufacturing, trading, housing, banking and contractors, among others, expressed concerns over deepening adverse impacts of the lack of full-fledged budget in their businesses.
The FNCCI had convened the roundtable of the business representatives on Tuesday. “The meeting concluded that we should exert a severe pressure against the political parties, urging them not to politicize the budget,” said Rajkarnikar.
He told Republica that the meeting endorsed launching of series of pressure programs in favor of full-fledged budget. Under these programs, FNCCI officials said they would hold roundtable meetings with all sections of the society and lobby with the political leaders to end differences on full-fledged budget.
“We will launch media campaign and mobilize all the chambers and commodity associations to raise awareness among the people why budget is important not just for us (business people) but also to a layman in rural hinterlands,” said Rajkarnikar.
Fundamentally, FNCCI said it was not in favor or against any political party. “But lack of fiscal policy and annual fund allocations has hurt private sector operations and regular businesses. Hence, we could not remain quiet,” Rajkarnikar added.
Issuing a press release, FNCCI also urged the political leaders not to do politics on budget, which is the lifeline of economy.
As present one-third budget is going to be used up soon, the FNCCI cautioned failure of the government to come up with full-fledged budget could push the country into a fiscal vacuum. “If this happened, the country will head toward becoming a failed state,” FNCCI said in the release.
“Political settlement might take time. Taking fiscal operations into hostage for political bargaining will be a foolish thing to do,” the FNCCI has assessed, and urged all the leaders to immediately pave the way for the announcement of full budget.