By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Nov.19: World Bank has suggested making efficient centralisation in decentralisation to accelerate its growth target.
The bank had suggested making strong central rules to facilitate the market integration.
The bank had pointed at the low expenditure from provincial and local bodies. “Only 20 per cent of total budget allocated for the local bodies and states were spent,” read the report.
Launching the report “Making Decentralization Work”, the bank also suggested controlling the quality of service delivery from the centre.
“If the government has delegated service delivery to local governments, it still has to provide incentives and exercise for quality control,” it said.
Stressing on a strong central government, the bank said that a strong government in the centre was required for successful implementation of decentralisation.
After 2015, there are provincial and local governments to draw town policies, basic health and sanitation and impose local taxes.
“Not only this, the local government are provided rights to formulate their own budget, collect revenue and specify tax rates,” read the report.
However, the Constitution states that the imposition of taxes and revenue collection on matters that falls under the jurisdiction of federal government has not given to the lower governments
The multilateral donor said that the lack of capacity in the part of subnational governments could adversely impact the growth in Nepal.
"Capacity challenges, particularly at the subnational level, could manifest through the under execution of provincial and local budgets, impacting service delivery," read the report.
It suggested to raise export competitiveness and establish a legal framework for cross-border electricity trade and enforce the implementation of policies and regulations related to climate and disaster risk reduction and management.
It also recommended Nepal to strengthen the preparation of the medium-term expenditure framework at the subnational level and adopt a legal framework for hiring staff at the subnational level and build capacity of all staff.
Representatives of local government and stakeholders, however, expressed mixed reaction upon decentralisation in the programme.
Kantika Sejuwal, mayor of Chandannath Municipality, stressed on making better and strong local bodies. She shared her experiences that lack of policy and inter-governmental coordination were major hurdles for the implementation of federalism.
“Some of the policies have been drafted, but have not been implemented despite our efforts,” she said, adding that not all required regulations were drafted.
Similarly, Mausami Shrestha, owner of Srinagar Agro in State 5, said that public service delivery was now easier than it was in the past. “I represent private sector, I have felt easier in getting registration and other tasks from the government as they are available in my doorstep,” she added.
She said she used to visit Kathmandu for approval of her any project in the past. But now she did not have to.