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Kathmandu,Monday January 17, 2000 Magh 3rd, 2056.
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APP moving in a
snail’s pace
-By Dinesh
Wagle
KATHMANDU, Jan
16- Agriculture Perspective Plan (APP) implemented with an aim of improving the poor
economic state of the country is not moving towards its goal as expected.
The achievement
of the ambitious 20-year plan, which aims at bringing down poverty rate to 14 percent from
49, during the last two and a half year is far from satisfactory.
The involvement
of private sector in the marketing of fertilizer and rise in shallow tube well
installation are the only achievements of the plan which is running in the third year.
Since the private sector has entered in fertilizer business, fertilizer availability has
increased from 54.4 thousand tons nutrient in 1997/98 to 84.8 thousand tons nutrient in
1998/99 due to increase in supply of urea.
Similarly,
shallow tube well installation in 1998/99 has increased to 5,124 compared to 1,809
installed in 1997/98, well over the target of 4,800 for fiscal year 1998/99.
“A single
year is not enough to judge the outcome of such a plan”, says Hari Shankar Tripathi,
Member of the National Planning Commission (NPC).
“Technically
speaking, only a year and a half has passed. The plan came into effect at the end of the
first year of implementation”, he elucidated.
The plan has
identified four priority areas : irrigation, fertilizer, technology and infrastructure
(agricultural road and rural electrification).
It expected to
take them as a unified package to certain pocket areas. APP aims at increasing the 2.5
percent of average annual growth in agriculture sector to 5 percent . The same rate
of growth is expected in the non-agricultural sector as well.
Many more
organizational structures imagined by the APP are still to take shape. Those of being in
the existence are either inactive or have no authority.
Budget
deficit is another factor behind the slow pace of the plan.
“Budget
earmarked for the plan is not sufficient”, says Dr Champak Pokhrel, Chief of the
Independent Analytical Unit (IAU), a monitoring body of the APP.
Agriculture road,
one of the most important programmes of APP, is the most neglected sector in terms of
budget allocation. APP proposed to construct 6,200 kms of the agriculture road . As per
the interim APP, 2,232 kms road will be built during the Ninth Five Year Plan. But only 49
kms of road has been built in the last two and half years so far.
Agricultural
road programme was initiated in 16 districts during the FY 1998/99. Of the total 70
million budget allocated, 50.1 million was spent because of the late release of the
budget.
For the running
fiscal year, government has appropriated Rs. 150 million contrary to the APP
recommendation investment sum of 1189 million rupees.
According to Prem
Kumar Paudel, Director at the Department of Local Infrastructure Development and
Agriculture Road (DoLIDAR), only Rs 30 million has been released and remaining sum
is not released yet.
“The
remaining sum is to be released under Agriculture Loan Programme of the Asian Development
Bank (ADB)” he says. Certain conditions of the Bank are still to be fulfilled by some
ministries. After that, the sum is expected to be released. Six months of the fiscal year
has lapsed, but the budget has not been released yet.
The APP suffered
from the late release of the budget last year and it is most likely to repeat this year
too.
While districts
are required to play prime role in APP implementation, training to the district office
chiefs and local political representatives has remained very weak.
“This is the
main problem APP is facing. It is not easy to continue the plan without giving training to
district level officers and politicians”, says Dr Pokhrel. Training could not be
provided due to lack of budget, he said.
Last year,
District Agriculture Development Committee (DADC) and Programme Execution Committee (PEC)
were formed for executing APP at the district level which recommends the center for
programme implementation.
But the problem
with them is that they don’t know how to discuss and make plan. If training is given
to them, the problem will be solved, says Dr Pokhrel.
“Steps are
not following the APP spirit”, says Dr Devendra Chapagain, APP formulation team
leader.
It took two years
to prepare the nationally agreed prime agenda for economic development and poverty
alleviation. All the successive governments after the restoration of democracy have
strongly agreed to implement the plan.
Ninth Plan
(1997-2002) has taken APP as a major vehicle to alleviate poverty through accelerated
growth in agriculture. Target of first five year of APP has been incorporated in the Ninth
Plan.
According to IAU, immediate attention
should be paid towards meeting resource gaps, pushing agricultural research and extension
directly into the APP priority commodities and components. It says there is a challenge to
meet the physical target of lagging inputs and effective monitoring of the output track.
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