Minster Gurung instructs to increase capital expenditures

Kathmandu: Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Prithvi Subba Gurung, has directed employees concerned to focus on increasing capital expenditures in the current fiscal year. He wanted all the bodies and departments under the Ministry to report over 90 percent of the capital expenditures in the present fiscal year.

In his address to a programme to review the Ministry’s progress during the last fiscal year 2080-81 BS (2023-24) today, the Minister said, “The major challenge of the hour is to increase the capital expenditures of the line ministry.”

He said, “Lower capital expenditure in the country reduces the chances for development. We will increase this capacity this year.” As he said, old and outdated acts, laws, and policies are hurdles to development. Moreover, the issue of overstaffing is another hurdle to achieving progress. Upon hearing to progress details, he directed the bodies concerned to pay attention to increasing the revenue collection as well. He also instructed the Rastriya Samachar Samiti (RSS), Nepal Television, Radio Nepal, and the Gorakhapatra Corporation, the state-owned media houses, to protect all movable and immovable properties and property utilize them to see a growth in the revenue collections. He insisted that ‘Digital Nepal’, ‘Satellite’ and ‘ Security Printing Press’ should also be among the schemes of National Pride projects. He informed that the Ministry has taken these three main topics as a ‘Hero Mission’. He said that the ministry will make Digital Nepal, satellite and printing press will be its own. “The next development is information technology”, he said, “We have considered this subject as a hero mission.”

Dr. Prakash Kumar Shrestha, a member of the National Planning Commission, said that it is necessary to have a meeting with a solution instead of being entangled in the problem. He promised that the commission will cooperate with the ministry in terms of technology and employment development. In the programme, the achievements in technology along with policy and legal reforms made by the Ministry were reviewed.

Among the achievements in mass media, the Ministry mentioned that the Rastriya Samachar Samiti (RSS) has started a news service in the Abadhi language, the audio-visual (video) service of the RSS has been started through FTP, and an agreement has been reached between the RSS and the Qatar News Agency (QNA) regarding the exchange of news content.

In the programme, the secretary of the ministry, Radhika Aryal, said that cooperation is expected among all employees to fulfill the government’s goal of creating a digital decade. Agencies under the Ministry, departmental representatives and stakeholders were present in the programme.

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