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Kathmandu Tuesday October 02, 2001 Ashwin 16, 2058.
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Unaccounted loans
Successive governments have drawn loans for the development
of this country and these now total approximately 194.27 billion rupees. There is nothing
terribly amiss about this on the face of it. But now that someone has put a figure on it,
the questions that need to be asked are: how carefully have we utilized such a huge volume
of credit, and has spending so much brought commensurate levels of socio-economic change
and improvement in the lives of the people? Where do we see stand after spending so much
money we didn’t have? Have we managed to spend our way out of poverty, or only into
greater national debt? The absence of proper records on how all that money got spent
points to a bitter reality: rampant irregularities. In fact, corruption has eaten into our
developmental effort as it has into the vitals of the economy as a whole. How many of us
take this seriously has been merely a subject of discussion. Everyone who is anyone —
be he or she a leader, civil servant or legal expert - has misused state funds at one time
or another. Perhaps, the country would have made more progress, had the loans been spent
properly in areas deemed appropriate. But successive governments have failed to see to
this. They have failed to even audit the books, leave aside any mechanism to ensure
financial probity. Amounts that came into this country in the form of loans or foreign
grants have often been misdirected for personal benefit through some byzentine channel or
other. The poor state of infrastructure— roads, health care facilities and education
— point to this. As a result of the past spending spree without much accountability,
the government has had to allocate over 25 percent of the annual budget for debt serving.
This is a figure that has yet to hit the man in the street the way it should.
The problem is two fold. There is the growing debt burden
which will increasingly prove a drag on our developmental effort. And there is the lack of
proper book keeping and accountability. This is a serious lacuna in the management of any
country. The Auditor General revealed the gross irregularities over loans before
parliament the other day. A chunk of loans, as cited by him, has been spent on foreign
trips for seminars and trainings. There has been no record on the reason for and
objectives of such trips. As such loans fell outside the purview of the annual budget,
governments failed to maintain any record, which then led to gross misuse. The situation
has been compounded by amounts advanced but not recovered. The government must realize
that such a trend will ultimately undercut the country’s development effort. It has
to introduce a proper mechanism to prevent irregularities and misuse of loans. Such misuse
of state funds or loans has put the country’s development and the future of the
Nepalese people at stake.
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