Money
Supplementary budget unlikely
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara on Wednesday hinted that the government may not introduce a supplementary budget in this fiscal year.Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara on Wednesday hinted that the government may not introduce a supplementary budget in this fiscal year.
“It is now late to introduce the supplementary budget as it is already time to frame the budget for the upcoming fiscal year,” he told a press meet held at the Ministry of Finance. The government generally starts preparing the budget for the upcoming fiscal year six months prior to the completion of a financial year. In this regard, groundwork for next fiscal year’s budget is already being laid, as six months have elapsed since this fiscal year began.
Earlier, the government was mulling over introducing the supplementary budget, as its savings in the last fiscal year had gone up to around Rs127 billion. A big chunk of money remained idle in government’s coffers last fiscal because of failure to make use of available funds, especially funds allocated for capital budget, on time.
In the last fiscal year, the government had also generated Rs482.7 billion in tax and non-tax receipts, which was Rs22.7 billion more than its revised revenue collection target of Rs460 billion.
This provided room to the government to revise revenue collection target of Rs565.9 billion fixed for this fiscal year, because that target was fixed on the basis of last fiscal year’s revised revenue collection target of Rs460 billion.
Considering these scenarios, the government was earlier planning to inflate the size of this fiscal year’s budget by Rs80 billion to Rs100 billion.
‘Ncell buyout deal will be taxed’
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara on Wednesday said that applicable capital gains tax would be levied on Ncell buyout deal.
“The taxman will soon determine the tax amount that ‘buyer and seller’ of Ncell must pay to the government,” he said. “We will obtain the tax based on that analysis.”
The minister’s statement comes three days after the Public Accounts Committee of Legislature Parliament directed the Ministry of Finance (MoF) to recover capital gains tax from Ncell buyout deal within three months by evaluating the applicable tax.
The committee has also directed the ministry provide updates on this issue every month. In the biggest acquisition deal in Nepali history, Axiata, a Malaysian telecom company, last year, acquired 80 percent stake in Ncell for Rs140 billion ($1.4 billion).