Budget lacks focus on results: NC

Kathmandu - The main opposition Nepali Congress (NC) said the budget unveiled for the fiscal year 2077/78 BS (2020/21) was aimed at catching public attention instead of delivering results. The budget has done its best to give assurances to the people, but it emphasized the impractical programmes, according to the party. A meeting of the NC parliamentary party held Friday assessed that the budget failed to introduce programmes having a nature of immediate implementation and capable of boosting up national economy when the entire industrial, tourism, educational, banking and financial sectors were paralyzed by the COVID-19 crisis.

The party blamed that the budget failed to come up with substantive plans to address issues facing the private sector enterprises and workers hit by the crisis. The NC believed the government could not give priority to those plans capable of making economic activities dynamic by creating suitable and sufficient jobs for facing employment crisis likely in the future due to the impact of COVID-19. NC Chief Whip Balkrishna Khand said the government brought the general budget as in the past by ignoring the adverse and unusual atmosphere at home.