National Planning Commission suggests limiting national pride projects to ten

Kathmandu – The National Planning Commission has suggested limiting the number of national pride projects to a maximum of 10.

In a meeting of the Finance Committee under the House of Representatives, Commission Member Secretary Rabilal Panth highlighted the policy, legal, and practical complexities seen in national pride projects and recommended a review of these projects.

The government has so far advanced 27 projects as national pride projects, out of which four have been completed. The completed projects include the Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower Project, Gautam Buddha International Airport (Bhairahawa), Pokhara Regional International Airport, and the first phase of the Melamchi Water Supply Project.

The Commission has recommended limiting the number of pride projects to a maximum of 10 and classifying the rest as transformative or priority projects. Panth also suggested in the parliamentary committee that separate laws should be enacted for the smooth supply of construction materials and that a legal provision should be made to prevent a single contractor from obtaining more than one package.

He expressed concerns that due to the lack of separate and clear legal and policy arrangements for national pride projects, they are forced to go through the same procedures as other general projects.

This has resulted in unsatisfactory progress of the projects, failure to make priority projects result-oriented, and delays in technical tasks such as land acquisition, tree cutting, and compensation determination.

Additionally, the lack of construction materials like stones, gravel, and sand, procedural delays in environmental impact assessments, budget management imbalances, and the weak performance of contractors have affected the projects.

The Commission believes that declaring pride projects without adequate preparation has led to prolonged time consumption in the initial stages. Although 27 projects are currently listed as national pride projects, Member Secretary Panth believes that only a limited number of projects will yield concrete results.

To address these issues, the Commission has proposed allocating sufficient budget to projects with more than 50% progress to complete them within two years. It has also suggested reviewing the scope of projects with less than 50% progress and conducting external evaluations of long-stalled projects to decide whether to keep or remove them from the list.

Member Secretary Panth informed that there is a lack of resources to achieve sustainable development goals, with financial management currently around 2.3 trillion rupees, while 3 trillion rupees are needed.