Nepal Struggles to Spend Health Budget Amidst Infrastructure Delays and Donor Dependency

Kathmandu. The World Health Organization has been stating that 10 percent of the total budget should be allocated to the health sector. In contrast, the Nepali government has not even been able to reach 5 percent of the total budget for the health sector. On one hand, there is a need to increase the budget for the health sector, and on the other hand, there is a problem of not being able to spend the allocated budget.

Due to a large portion of the total budget being allocated to building construction and infrastructure development, and the process taking a long time to complete, the budget often gets frozen at the end of the fiscal year. Health officials say that the budget gets frozen because the government is too busy with small programs from donor agencies.