Kathmandu. Finance Minister Dr Swarnim Wagle has commented that the Value Added Tax (VAT) imposed on electricity tariff has been unnecessarily publicized. <\/p>\n
Speaking at an interaction programme on budget organized by Nepal Association of Economic Journalists (NAFIJ) on Monday, Minister Wagle said that the government has dared to take tough decisions. <\/p>\n
He said that the additional tax that consumers who consume up to 150 units of electricity has to pay is very low and this has been exaggerated. <\/p>\n
Finance Minister Wagle said that a provision has been made to reduce tax on electric vehicles (EVs) priced below Rs 50 lakh. <\/p>\n
“This government has done what no one dared to do,” he said. How much do you pay for 150 units of electricity, not even five percent? <\/p>\n
50 units are free. The tax is only three percent. If the bill is 8-900, the total payment is 24 rupees. Here, I see preaching as if the sky has fallen. The budget of the Ministry of Energy is Rs 85 billion. It is only Rs 102 for paying Rs 3,000. The sky doesn’t fall. We are making a big investment. The price of EVs below Rs 50 lakh is declining, small notes are left in the budget. \u2019<\/p>\n
He said that both time and resources were the challenges in making this year’s budget. He said that he did not get enough time as he had to bring the budget in May after coming to the government in mid-April. <\/p>\n
He said that discussions were also held on many issues that were not included in the budget but the issues that needed adequate study were kept for the coming year. <\/p>\n
He said, “The challenge in this budget was the lack of time and the challenge of other resources. The budget had to be brought in March, but there was not much time. There was no discussion on some areas where the budget was not available. In some cases, it has been kept for the next year without studying it well. What we will do for five years, now we have given more priority to laying the foundation. \u2019<\/p>\n
On the occasion, Finance Minister Wagle admitted that people’s expectations were high as the government has two-thirds majority. <\/p>\n
“Some people have said that the budget is ambitious. This year, there is a two-thirds majority government, expectations are high. A budget of Rs 25-26 trillion could have been brought with a 35 per cent GDP ratio. But we also have to look at the available resources. That’s why we have brought a balanced and comparatively small budget,” he said. <\/p>\n
Claiming that the government has not brought the budget based on loan, he said that it has given priority to internal resource mobilization. <\/p>\n
Stating that the incumbent government had to bear the responsibility of billions of rupees generated by the erstwhile government, Wagle said that new programmes could not be brought by ignoring the old projects. <\/p>\n
However, he claims that the government has been able to include many transformational projects and programs in the budget despite limited resources and liabilities. <\/p>\n
He said, “This time it is not dependent on debt. We have said that we will raise our internal resources in an ambitious way. The confusion that has been created by this debt should be removed. Old obligations have also weighed down us. We are responsible for billions of rupees. <\/p>\n
It’s the people’s money, it has to be done. There was no question of leaving the old parties and doing new things. However, we have brought many transformational projects within that boundary. \u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kathmandu. Finance Minister Dr Swarnim Wagle has commented that the Value Added Tax (VAT) imposed on electricity tariff has been unnecessarily publicized. Speaking at an interaction programme on budget organized by Nepal Association of Economic Journalists (NAFIJ) on Monday, Minister Wagle said that the government has dared to take tough decisions. He said that theContinue reading “Finance Minister Wagle said: ‘Publicity was made as if the sky had fallen’ on electricity tax.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":85873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized-en"],"acf":[],"publishedDateNp":"\u0967\u096e \u091c\u0947\u0937\u094d\u0920 \u0968\u0966\u096e\u0969, \u0938\u094b\u092e\u092c\u093e\u0930 \u0967\u0969:\u0967\u0968","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalopati.com\/kp_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalopati.com\/kp_api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalopati.com\/kp_api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalopati.com\/kp_api\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalopati.com\/kp_api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kalopati.com\/kp_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89851,"href":"https:\/\/kalopati.com\/kp_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89850\/revisions\/89851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalopati.com\/kp_api\/wp\/v2\/media\/85873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalopati.com\/kp_api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalopati.com\/kp_api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalopati.com\/kp_api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}