freedom1 Forum organized an interaction on the bodies under the public finance management, their activities, and journalists’ role on citizens’ access to budget making process has been organized recently in the capital city, Kathmandu, on 20 December 2013.

At the interaction organized by the freedom1 Forum, representatives from the National Planning Commission, Office of the Auditor General, Education Department, and journalists working in economic beat interacted on public finance management and information related to this.

On the occasion, Joint Secretary at the National Planning Commission, Gopinath Mainali, said the budget was being made based on the budget making guidelines. However, efforts from all sectors were essential to make the budget making process fully transparent.

Some of the ministries demand budget exceeding their expense limit, he said, adding that there was still the practice of demanding budget till a week before the expiry of the fiscal year.

According to him, media could play an important role to discourage malpractices in the public finance management.

The issues the media could report on public finance management were whether the projects were approved on time, budget transfer, change in the sources of budget, non-budgetary expense and foreign aid, he added.

Spokesperson at the Office of the Auditor General (OAG), Baburam Gautam, said even the OAG which is the supreme auditing body of the country was unaware about the pattern of budget expenditure on different headings from the foreign aid Nepal receives in the name of technical aid.

If the OAG is not given authority to audit the expense of the technical assistance, such expenditure must be transparent, he stressed.

He also said the budget making and planning process must be made scientific. Spokesperson Gautam shared a funny example of faults in planning that even a project of constructing bridge at a place where there was no river was proposed. Timely disposal of arrears was one of the significant issues to report by the media, he added.

freedom1 Forum Chairman Taranath Dahal said media could play significant role to make people aware on entire process of budget making which would finally contribute to transparency in governance.