How a federal budget is built in Nepal, from ministry wish-list to Jestha 15

By law the budget is presented to parliament on the fifteenth of Jestha, roughly the end of May. Behind that fixed date sits a months-long process of ceilings, submissions and trims. (Ministry of Finance, 2025)

Provinces and local governments present their own budgets a few weeks later, funded in large part by transfers whose size is only known once the federal figures are out.

Where the money goes

Recurrent spending, mostly salaries and transfers, takes the largest share. Capital spending is the line everyone watches, and the one that is most often under-spent by the end of the year. (‘Nepal Development Update’, 2025)

Economists have argued for years that the problem is not the size of the capital budget but the pace at which projects are prepared before money is attached to them.