Delivering On Budget FY2009-10 : A Set of Implementation Issues

The newly elected government proposed its first budget on 11 June 2009 with a view to support a trajectory of moderate growth, reduced poverty through employment generation and expansion of safety nets, low price level and to tackle the impact of the global financial crisis. The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) in its budget reaction pointed out that addressing these objectives will entail designing of a set of appropriate budgetary measures, but will depend much more on the efficacy of their delivery.1 Furthermore, such delivery will need a coherent, coordinated, consistent and committed participation of the total government machinery and all other development actors and stakeholders. It was encouraging to see that the Finance Minister publicly agreed with the analysts that implementation of the budget would be the most important challenge. In his post-budget press briefing on 12 June 2009, the Finance Minister stated : “While drawing up the budget, we knew its execution was going to pose a huge challengeâ€.