Inner-view

Our Past Target were Unrealistic: Dr. Shanker Sharma

Member, National Planning Commission

How do you rate the success of the Ninth five-year plan?

I would say ‘mixed’ especially in terms of some of the infrastructure developments such as roads and some of the educational achievements that have been quite markable as has been assessed by some of the indicators. I think we have achieved more than what we targeted. But in other areas, especially in terms of reducing the poverty and overall growth rate, we have a major shortfall. In the growth rate, the major shortfall came especially from external as well as internal problems as has been the forecast made for this year.

As to poverty alleviation, we didn’t achieve the target because of low achievement in agricultural growth, which stands at about 3 per cent from its earlier target of 4.1 per cent.

It is customary for almost all government bodies to pass on the blame for the dismal performance to other government sectors. Why this trend ?

I would say that is more political. But generally speaking, political instability and lack of control of the political leadership in the major areas of hurdle towards development leading to weak performance. I think that could be blamed as one of the problems in Nepal. But rather than shifting the weakness from one government to another and blaming the previous government, the leadership must perform. That’s my feeling. But the overall leadership of the government and its control over the major development development activites in Nepal has been very weak and the instability following transfer and changes of the ministers, transfer of secretaries has been major problems.

In such a context, how do the country hope to get more support from the donors ?

Basically, we have to focus on the institutional building. It means that rather than donor making the projects and programmes by themselves and presenting to Nepal I think, they should support us in making the government capable of developing their own projects and programs, so that the ownership is with the government. Similarly, we have decentralization program. If you can make the people more capable, I think they can develop their own programs and priorities.

Good governance has become lip service of all governments. What is the major obstacles for good governance in our country ?

Basically the obstacles are in three to four areas. One is the political instability and lack of control of the leadership to the major problems of development activities. Two is lack of institutional development which means that line ministries as well as local bodies like DDCs and VDCs, were not able of handling the problems of modern economy. Rather over the last ten years, this part has been weakened. More transfer of people from one place to another, not giving proper emphasis on monetary aspect of the government and development activities and not making the bureaucracy accountable and transparent are some of the other obstacles. And then the transfer and promotion to a large extent were not based on their performance. I think these are the institutional aspects. And another major aspect is corruption. Even if somebody does corruption, they have not been penalized, so we need stronger and stringent acts and regulations.

It is alleged that plannings in our country are good but unrealistic to attain. Do you think so?

To a certain extent I think that plannings and target have to be ambitious for we have to press very hard to all the mechanism and machineries of the government as well as non-governmental organizations to achieve the targets, so that we can achieve the goal of poverty alleviation. But to some extent, in many areas we have found out that targets have been unrealistic and it has not been supported by the budgets or projected foreign aid coming into the country.

This time, HMG is saying that it won’t seek monetary assistance from donors but their support on our policies and programmes adopted earlier. Could you elaborate on it ?

The main objective basically is to get the support on our policies, programmes and institutional reforms that we are proposing. Actually what donors are saying is that our governance has problem, our targets have been unrealistic, our goals and objectives have not been prioritized, and they are not linked to the budget. So we are trying to do those things this time so that ownership is with us, priorities are set and linked with the budget that provide strong framework in terms of policy and programs and that will tally also invite foreign aid to support the gap that exists between what we target with what we had in terms of resources. Therefore, this time it will not be pledging conference. It will basically discuss the programs, priorities and reform of the government and donor community.

Do you hope that as envisaged by the 10th Plan, the target of economic growth rate to hit 6.2 per cent whereas we have only 2.5 per cent growth at present?

Dr Sharma: At this point of time, we have 2.5 per cent growth rate. Our growth rate has been revised a little bit downward and we have projected 6.2 per cent growth rate in the 10th Plan. It is achievable in the sense that if we can achieve the target of agriculture growth by 4.1 per cent, then the growth of 6.2 per cent target is not over estimated.

Non-agriculture sector had some problems this year only. But otherwise non-agriculture sector was doing very satisfactorily. So we still have potential. Our only problem is agriculture. But then we have to come out from the external as well as internal problems that we have faced this year.

At a time when major chunk of the budget is diverted to curtail the Maoist activities and there is much chance that emergency will be extended, how do you expect a positive growth ?

This is a very tricky and complex question. But the government is hoping that security situation will be restored as soon as possible beginning from the next fiscal year. And then if we have normal situation next year, my feeling is that external situation will also improve. We will have substantial growth in non-agriculture sector. Actually, it would be even easier to have growth rate starting from 2.5 per cent base this year. But if there are continuing problems, we are designing some alternative mechanisms so that we can go to the village, district areas, so that development activities are enhanced, the presence of government is felt in the rural areas and we can pick up some of the activities that we have left. We are thinking on that mechanism.

Do you think that all donors will be supporting us in our existing mechanism as per our expectations ?

In terms of setting priorities and reform agenda, we are doing number of things. We have developed the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) that clearly prioritizes our agenda and also provides resources that we had. It has a linkup with our target. But there is still a gap between what we had targeted in the 10th Plan and what we have in terms of MTEF. So we can see a fair gap between the resources availability in the country, its link result and what the target is. So I think that’s where the donors can come in with the improved modality of medium term expenditure framework and improve implementation modality. That’s what we are aiming for. I am very hopeful on that.

Is the government planning to implement development activities in affected areas side by side with Army operation against the Maoists ?

Definitely. First of all, there is no development without peace. We have to agree on that. Peace and development activities will go together definitely. Second, in the areas where the Maoists effect has been more, we have to have both local bodies and NGOs which need to be mobilized and there should be some shield of security, I mean, the support from the security, so that developmental activities could be enhanced. But at this point of time, what we are thinking is that in the highly affected areas, we are looking for projects of shorter gestation period which we can develop quickly and be completed fast.

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