MoLD to implement LG Act after a decade

Bishnu Prasad Aryal
Kathmandu, June 1

The Ministry of Local Development (MoLD) has come up with the resolution to fully implement the regulation under the Local Governance Act 2055BS from the coming fiscal year.

“Though the regulation came into effect then, it was not completely implemented in practice,” said Narahari Sharma Bhandari, officer at the Municipal Management Section, the MOLD. “We are all set to enforce it from mid-July,” he affirmed.

The MoLD has set criteria of minimum condition performance measure (MCPM) to provide budget under the Local Governance Community Development Programme for the municipalities from the next fiscal year.

“The ministry has formulated the MCPM to provide budget under the LGCDP project in the municipalities,” said Bhandari. “The budget of those municipalities, which are weaker in the performance, will be reduced by 25 per cent,” he said.

There are 58 municipalities in the country. Rs 75 million will be provided to the 58 municipalities on the basis of the MCPM, according to the MoLD. MC comprises of 15 conditions whereas PM has 40 points.

The MC includes approval of the annual budget, audit, analysis, transparency, operation of information section, internal audit, estimation of revenues and identification of resources of the concerned municipalities.

“Fourteen municipalities with top performance will be given additional 25 per cent of the budget while other 14 municipalities with poor performance will be reduced 25 per cent of the budget,” said Bhandari. “And 30 municipalities with the satisfactory performance will also be divided into two groups. First 15 better municipalities will get additional 10 per cent of the budget and other 15 will get 10 per cent less budget,” he added.

Bhandari said that the MoLD was scrutinizing the performance of the municipalities. “We will complete the monitoring by the end of June and the annual budget will announce its decision,” he said.

The MoLD has decided to allocate at least Rs two million to each of the municipalities on the criteria of poverty level, area and population. “This formula includes education, poverty, health and sanitation programmes,” said Chakra Pani Sharma, officer at the MoLD.

The MoLD provides a grant of Rs 320 million (Rs 55.5 million on administrative expenditure and Rs 264.5 million on development) to the municipalities. Similarly, Rs 160 million is allocated for local level agriculture roads while Rs 2.5-5 million is provided for the people’s participatory programmes in those municipalities.

Meanwhile, Rs 1.33 billion is allocated for the municipalities as per 1.5 per cent of the taxes charged at the custom offices for the municipalities. “We also provide them additional Rs 5 million for each of the six projects under the reserve fund. Each of the municipalities will get three projects first and additional three will be granted on the basis of performance,” said Sharma.