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Kathmandu Monday February 11, 2002 Magh 29, 2058.
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How long can govt afford
self-deception?
By Satyendra Timilsina
KATHMANDU, Feb 10: The recently concluded Nepal
Development Forum (NDF) meet underscores the fact that the donors are ready to help
bailout Nepal from any crisis. But then, it is the government that now has to capitalise
on the support that the donors have pledged for.
The donor community has played their part well.
Their endorsement to the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), the Tenth Five-Year Plan
(TFYP) and the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and commitment to provide US$ 500
million annually is a notable achievement.
But most important is the positive response the
donors showed to the PRSP, which outlines that the donors would not be allowed to select
priority areas of their own but should rather work in areas that the government
stipulates.
And now that Nepal received what it had dreamt
for at the meet, it is faced with the task of meeting the donor’s expectations. In
short: "The ball is now in the Nepali court and all depends on what it does to keep
up to the promises it made during the meet."
The NDF meet had begun with a bold statement
from the vice president of the World Bank who lambasted Nepal’s poor governance. She
had stated that Nepal currently faced a crisis of good governance. But she had added,
"Poverty in Nepal is the poverty of means, not minds."
And though Nepal reciprocated by convincing the
donors that it would carry out the promised reforms zealously, question arises if the
government would really be able to overhaul the corrupt bureaucratic system where service
delivery is beyond the reach of the general public.
The government had made a number of commitments
even in the past. Though successes cannot be denied, governance has always remained a
problem. But henceforth, failure to deliver on "governance" would only taint
Nepal’s image in the international arena, and that is what the government needs to
keep in mind.
The finance minister indeed was able to assure
the foreign delegates that he would mobilise the foreign-acquired resources efficiently.
He even admitted that Nepal would loose its moral rights to ask for additional financial
support if it fails to incorporate the donors’ genuine demand. Unfortunately, the
finance ministry alone cannot improve the country’s weak governance.
The actual disbursement of the committed
financial support would rely mostly on how the government initiates its actions to fulfil
its commitments – improve weak governance by strengthening its implementation
machinery. However, to ensure that development endeavours go unrewarded, there is an
urgent need to increase even the absorptive capacity.
Taking into the fact that the only half of the
budgeted development expenditure is disbursed and even less is actually utilised, the
government has to strengthen the implementation machinery for the desired output of the
perspective plans.
This calls for strong co-ordination among the
line ministries, whose functioning so far has been blighted by power struggle and
political interventions. Therefore, a major task before the implementation of the reform
programme is to improve the work culture in the ministries to increase the efficiency in
service delivery.
Furthermore, the success of the
government’s will to improve governance depends a lot on the endemically weak
political leadership that is prone more to self-seeking and petty squabbling than honestly
reasoning together in the interest of public good and personal image.
The need of the hour is to ensure that the
donors’ expectations are met. Especially under the present circumstances when
resources mobilised internally are below regular expenses. And if Nepal fails to deliver
even at this juncture, perhaps a long wait would be required to see any silver lining in
Nepal’s development.
It is now high time that we stop deceiving
ourselves. Especially since the figures are there to speak for themselves. Almost 38 per
cent of the population live under poverty line, 300,000 unemployed people enter the job
market annually, irrigation is yet to cover two-thirds of the cultivable land, many
district headquarters have not even seen road links and essential services are yet to
reach out to the total population.
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