After the budget speech announced by the finance minister, the Internatriya program is on. Due to political strife, this matter could not get entry in the House. The budget session is always the most politically charged. This year is no exception.

Questions and doubts have been seen about the challenge of budget implementation in various organizations, reactions of individuals, news and articles in newspapers. However, not much comment is heard about budget allocation and technical aspects. Perhaps because it was not an election year, there was not much debate about the presented budget. The

budget has also raised hopes in some places, but it should have raised more confidence. Also, if this budget meets most of the targets, public confidence will gradually increase. So the main thing is implementation.  If the size of the

budget is compared with other countries, it is not bad. Looking at the percentage of annual budget of other countries, the size of Nepal's current budget is almost the same as that of last year. In terms of data, looking at last year's budget and revenue situation, it should not be said that it is big, but it can be said that it is small when looking at the development needs. To meet the needs of

development, we need to increase both revenue and expenditure, but this task is not easy. As long as the level of governance is not improved - neither the revenue will rise nor the effectiveness of the expenditure will increase. This is the biggest development challenge for us. That requires some policy intervention. With a government of two major parties, such interventions could be passed with a two-thirds majority. However, the government did not pay attention. 

We have made great progress in revenue collection during the Republic period. As before the republic, the revenue from taxes (including income tax, customs, excise duty and value added tax) was only about 1 trillion, but now it has reached about 13 trillion. This is no small feat. The main contribution to this is the import made on the strength of remittances.

But it is still possible to increase the revenue and it must be increased, otherwise the development we want with this kind of revenue and expenditure structure will not be possible for several more years. Some say that the goal of more than 5 percent economic growth cannot be met, the experience of the past 50 years also says the same. But this is not enough. 

In this context, we have reduced the financial expenditure to about 3 billion, from that, looking at the economic growth rate of 4.5 percent, the capital expenditure of 1 billion rupees is equivalent to 1 to 1.5 percent economic growth. Even in this way, it is not difficult to raise the capital expenditure above 5 billion to 7.5 percent, but where will that source come from? How to improve good governance? These are the challenges of today's Nepal economy and development administration. 

Now the questions raised regarding the budget are similar. For example: revenue does not rise as much as expected, due to which there is a problem in implementation. Second, an increase in the debt burden may reduce the amount of investment received by the private sector in the future. Liquidity problems may arise.

Thirdly, foreign aid is unlikely to come even if it is a small amount as expected by the government. The private sector has given the benefit of the doubt. Even those who work as employees and in the private sector and earn a living by selling their labor seem neither very hopeful nor pessimistic.

Now the question arises - how to increase trust and interest in the budget? The first step is to be able to spend as much as the capital expenditure allocated for this purpose in a result-oriented manner. If the government can increase public confidence that it will develop as much as it says it will, it will have a direct impact on revenue collection and good governance. Mainly because revenue collection is the major challenge at present, policy intervention was and still is necessary in this regard. Three things are important in terms of revenue. 

First, our revenue is based on tax, the non-tax share is only around 10 percent. Whereas, the non-tax share being above 25 percent could indicate that the government's sources of income other than taxes are also strong. If we look at the experience of other developed countries and our neighboring countries, provisions should have been created for that with certain policy interventions. 

Second, there are growing suspicions that the share of the informal economy in the country is greater than that of the formal economy. In that regard, there should have been a program with a major policy intervention on how to bring the informal economy into the formal economy. By doing this, the range of revenue could be wider and sustainable. 

Thirdly, looking at the tax structure of our country, a large part is raised from value added tax and customs based tax. Excise tax on some luxury goods, which is now levied on some vehicles used by the lower class and also on materials like alcohol and soft drinks, clearly states that the consumer is the backbone of our tax system. 

The share of tax on personal income and tax on profits earned by organizations is relatively low. What is clear from this is that the main source of our revenue is the common people of the lower and lower middle classes.

It should be remembered that even though the share of such citizens is large in number, their share of net income and national product is very little. Therefore, it was necessary to make a policy intervention in order to increase the share of tax levied on the income of individuals and the profit and capital gains of organizations, which are considered to be the backbone of the progressive tax system. It could have been done but it was not done. 

Another policy intervention could have been towards controlling leakages by improving tax and revenue administration. It is said that there is about 40 percent such leakage. This is a large quantity. For this, if the tax administration is modernized by creating the necessary infrastructure, it is possible to reduce it even if it cannot be eradicated.

This is possible with a well-intentioned group of competent staff in revenue administration. Thus, if the budget could be seen to increase the capital expenditure by increasing the revenue, it would have helped to increase the average demand in the economy, bring excitement and this budget could have earned trust. As the bag increases, the doubts and misgivings about the implementation would also disappear by themselves.