Rs 1.69B unaudied in devlopment ministry

Bishnu Prasad Aryal
Lalitpur, September 17

Some Rs 1.69 billion remains non-audited budget, which is unlikely to recover, in the different departments and programmes under the Ministry of Local Development.

According to the MoLD, there are 75 District Development Committees (DDC) and 58 municipalities along with departments, commissions and committees as bodies of the ministry.

Devi Prasad Gyawali, under-secretary and chief at the Financial Administrative Section in the ministry, said that Rs 2.42 billion was a total of non-audited amount in the fiscal year 2006/2007. “We were successful to recover Rs 720 million by the end of last fiscal year during the past years,” he said. “Rs 12.3 million was recovered in the last fiscal year alone.”

Among the total non-audited budget, Rs 1.17 billion belongs to 75 DDCs and 58 municipals, Rs 401.7 million to the departments and commissions under the ministry and Rs 220 million under the central office of the MoLD and its programmes.

The Dalit Commission, Gumba (Monastry) Commission, Marginalised and Disadvantaged Communities Commission, Commission for Preservation of Endangered Ethnic Minorities, Rural Area Development Board, Solid Waste Management and Resource Mobilisation Centre, Local Development Training Academy, among other programmes, are those bodies responsible for increasing the non-audited budget of the MoLD.

Another high ranking official at the Ministry said that the revealed amount of non-audited budget was not real. “The amount of non-audited might be higher than this. There is not a specific data of non-audited budget,” he said requesting not to reveal his name.

Gyawali, however, said that this amount was published by the Office of Auditor General. “The real amount may vary from the published one,” he admitted.

There is less chance to recover the entire non-audited budget, said Gyawali. “Those amounts were spent by avoiding the transparency. Some might be utilised in proper purposes while others misused,” he added. “It is almost impossible to recover the rest of the non-audited amount from the concerned departments, commissions and programmes.”