Nepal budget 2014/15

In July 13, 2014 honorable finance minister Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat publish budget of Nepal 2071/72 (2014/15). This year budget focused on reducing poverty, economic growth, employment generation with the target of graduating Nepal from least developing country to developing country. This year budget was of NRs. 618100000.
Honorable Minister Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat put some Key points of Budget 2071 / 72 they are

Economic growth rate

Economic growth rate for fiscal year 2070/71 forcast is 5.2 per cent.

Aim to keep inflation within 8.5 per cent but could reach 9 per cent.

Tax

Tax exemption threshold increased to Rs 250,000 for individual income and up to Rs 300,000 for couple.

Health sector

“With the commitment to implement the new health policy, the government has allocated Rs 33.52 billion for the health sector in the fiscal year 2071/72 BS”, Finance Minister Dr Ram Saran Mahat announced.

Capacity of the government hospitals would be uplifted based on the concept of private public partnerships and a board with facilities would be arranged for the head of the nation, head of the government and other VIPs at Bir Hospital.

Arrangement will be made for free medicine distributions round the clock in the hospitals and health centres prescribed by the government as per the local necessity.

All sub-health posts will be upgraded into health posts and ICU wards will be established in five zonal hospitals while geriatric wards will be established in all zonal hospitals.

Non-practice allowance will be provided to doctors working in remote areas after preparing fixed standards.

Education

The government has allocated Rs. 86.03 billion for the development of entire education sector in the upcoming fiscal year.

“Finance Minister Dr Ram Sharan Mahat informed this while presenting the budget for newfiscal year 2071-72 BS (2014-15 AD) at the Legislature-Parliament Sunday. The existing education act will be amended, emphasis on promoting technical and vocational education”, he said.

As stated by the government in its new budget, at least 200 community schools across the country will be taken in to merging in the next fiscal year as the government policy of merging schools with least number of students and close proximity.

Sport – Cricket stadium 

The government has allocated Rs. 200 million for the construction of the international cricket stadium at Mulpani in the Capital.

In its budget for the fiscal year 2014-15, the government has released the amount for the construction of cricket stadium.

Plans of constructing at least one sports ground in every electoral constituency within the next three years – 53 sports grounds in the upcoming fiscal year.

There aren’t any particular commitments towards any other individual sports nor the budgetallocation for the actual sports activities alone. However the total budget for the Ministry of Youth and Sports is Rs 1.48 billion.

Defence

The government has allocated Rs. 28.86 billion to defense in the budget for the upcoming fiscalyear. The government has planned to make timely revisions on the Army Act- 2006.

Giving continuity to the ‘Bunker to Barrack’ project related to management of accommodation toNepal Armies in its new budget statement today, the government has vowed to make the project implementation more effective.

The budget has stated that the construction of Mailung-Syafrubesi and Khulalu Simikot road inKarnali corridor will be handled by the NA so as to establish the NA role in infrastructure development.

Social security

The government has allocated a total of Rs 55 billion for government employees’ pension and other programmes run by different bodies under the head of social security.

“Integrated social security bill will be drafted and tabled in the Legislature-Parliament to do away with the duplication of the budget in different programmes and reach to the target groups”, Finance Minister Dr Mahat said.

Voters’ identity cards will be made basis for distribution of social security allowance until the national identity card was not prepared.

Seven different plans will be run for the management of social security fund records by preparing the biometric identity cards of the contributors.

2360 income generating and 850 infrastructure development programmes will be run through the Poverty Alleviation Fund and Rs 3.61 billion has been allocated for this purpose.

The health insurance programme of 39 diseases commenced from the current fiscal year will be expanded in 15 districts with at least three districts in each development region.

The government has also announced Rs 2,000 additional allowance for health treatment to the people aged 70 and the monthly allowance of women social mobilizers has been increased by Rs 1,500.

Peace and securities

Rs 37.08 billion allocated to the Ministry of Home Affairs for peace and securities management.

Information and communication sector

Rs 4.13 billion for development of information and communication as well as Tarini Prasad Koirala Memorial Village in Biratnagar.

Agro sector

The government has, stressed the need of moderinising and commercialising agricultural sector which contributes one third portion to Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The government has a policy of attracting youth community to agriculture, the backbone of country’s economy, with giving subsidy in the purchase of fertilizer, seeds, organic farming andagriculture tools and providing soft loans to farmers.

The government has allocated Rs. 2 billion for agro sector. The budget for the fiscal year 2014-15 AD unveiled by the government today has set a target of motivating youths in agriculture  by  discouraging them going abroad for jobs.

Urban Infrastructures

Rs 26 billion for road constructions under the central government.

Energy and Drinking water

1188 mega watt electricity within three years and 26 mw of Solar plant to be installed.

Any house hold installation of more than 1Kw solar systems can connect with grid lines and sell surplus electricity to Nepal Electricity Board through net metering. 100 per cent Tax exemption in any profit for 10 years on such sale of energy – 50 percent exemption there after for 5 years. And Rs 5million grant per mega watt installation will be provided once connected to the grid line.

Melamchi Project to receive Rs 4.64 billion more.

Half a Million rupees extra for Each Constituency

Addressing the demand of the constituent assembly members to some extent, the government has allocated half a million rupees for each costituencies on top of Rs 1 million previosly allocated for development programme.

It will focus on construction of suspension bridges, bridges on roads, expansion of road networks in 815 VDCs which are not connected to road link, upgradation of 55,000-km long roadways, and one district one national policy programme. The social security allowance will be provided through the bank.

Labour Bank

The government has announced plans to establish labour bank with joint investment of employers, employees and government.

National training development policy would be formulated and the institutes providing vocational skills and coordination will be made with the technical institutes of each election constituencies

(Source: http://arko.asia/news/nepal/budget-2071-72-fiscal-year-key-points/)

Visualization of Budget 2071/72 summary

OKFN meeting

Every Sunday meetup between community members of OKFN (Open Knowledge Foundation Nepal) taken place in smart samaj office at usual time. Today 20th July, 2014 it was special day because our OKFN members Prakash Neupane and Kshitiz khanal were back after attending OKF festival which was held in Germany from July 15-17.

All members are curious to know about the event they attend. Program was started by Prakash Neupane giving small brief about experience he had got from attending the OKF festival. After Prakash, Kshitiz start to tell his story about OKF festival what he has done there, what he learned and how we can initiate those idea here in Nepal. 

Next, members discuss about how members can make OKFN more strong and make openspending nepal to a platform so it can be useful for every local and international person. Prakash raise a question for making openspending nepal as a platform who are our target, who are our data generator and who are our intermediate person. Each individual members had same question and answer so members were divided into four groups with three members in each team.

Group A:	Kshitiz, Rajesh and Rajendra
Group B:	Suroj, Firoj and Pukar
Group C:	Utsav, Mausam and Subham
Group D	Prantik, Surendra and Milan

Data Generator	User	Intermediate	Group
VDC	GOvernment Official	Journalist	A
DDO	Civil society Org.	Our Network	A
M.O.F	GEneral public	NGO, INGO	A
Muncipality	Journalist	Political personal	A
NGO's, INGO's	NGOs. INGOs		A
Government budies	International MEdia		A
Research PErson	Data Enthusiast		A
MOF	GEneral public	Media House	B
DDO	Media House	Journalist	B
VDC	Journalist	Officials of Organization	B
Muncipality	Business Organization		B
NGO, INGo	NGOs. INGOs		B
business Office	Developers		B
DDO	General Public	Journalist	C
VDC	GOvernment Official	NGO, INGO	C
Muncipality	International MEdia	Local OFficer	C
M.O.F	Organizations		C
	Media		C
Muncipality	Public	Media House	D
DDC	GOvernment Official	Reporter	D
VDC	NGOs. INGOs		D
NGOS			D

Second, Group B listed M.O.F, D.D.O, V.D.C, Muncipality, NGO, INGO and Business office as data generator. Equally General public, Media House, Journalist, Business Organization, NGO, INGO, and Developers as user and Media House, Journalist and Officials of Organization as Intermediate.

Third Group C listed D.D.O, V.D.C, Muncipality and M.O.F as Data generator. Similarly General Public, Government Official, International Media, Organization and Media as user. After Journalist, NGO, INGO and local officer as intermediate. 

Finally Group D select Muncipality, D.D.C, V.D.C and N.G.O as data generator. Public, Government Official, NGO and INGO as user plus Media house and reporter as intermediate.  

As soon as the completion of group decision we had our key data generator for openspending Nepal are V.D.C, D.D.O, M.O.F and Municipality office. Likewise our main user are government officers and general public lastly the important part for openspending Nepal are intermediate bodies journalist and media house by whom they can help us to reach our platform and message to general public and government bodies. 

After completion and analyzing result we wrap up for the day and fixed our next meeting same day same time with pre-event data class discussion for Islington College. 

Open Data Day 2014

Open Data Day kickoff in kathmandu, Nepal at GPF building where open community like FOSS Nepal, Wikipedia Nepal, Open Knowledge Nepal, Mozilla Nepal and other community gather in the same place to celebrate it. In this day Mozilla Nepal team visualize the data with the help of thimble, Open Spending Nepal introduce portfolio of openspendingnepal.org like wise wikipedia Nepal was lauching their wiki school in the event. 

This event was taken lead by Wikipedia Nepal with the collaboration of other open community, in open data day we had quite numbers of visitor who are interested about concept of openness. I was in openspending team so I couldn't attend formal discussion but from the visitor we had found they are quite interested about "open community" in Nepal. 

In data day our main focus was to launched our portfolio openspendingnepal.org which will track every Nepal government spending and visualized in the simple matter so it can be understand by normal citizen to data geek. Likewise the data we will be visualizing will be from authentic website and concern department, data will be in readable format and can be used any where. In this website we had added some feature like about comment method where normal citizen can comment about spending and budget they get in their area where it is spend correctly or not so that later government can review these comment making their survey and giving full effort to the development of nation.

Wikipedia education program

A week long Wikipedia education program which was started in 2nd February,2014 was successfully completed at 7th February, 2014. This class was basically focused for the new students (early bird students), class was taken by the Wikipedia driving licence holder from the Wikipedia Education program 1. Srijan Karki, Bishal Bhandari, Manish Dangol and Anupam Poudel had taken lead for class. 

First class was completed by giving short introduction about Wikipedia, local community and how to contribute in the wikipedia in English as well as in local languagae.  Second day was started with making the account of each student in the class and the students who had already completed making account are helping other students to create the account. After successfully making the account in Wikipedia students were taught how to write in Nepali Unicode short introduction about typing in Nepali unicode. As students were not much familiar with the Nepali Unicode keyboard layout it make them really hard to write in Nepali language but still all students became patient and start to learn the layout. In the 3rd day of class, it was about how to make user page and how to work in the sandbox. In the 4th class it was about choosing the topic where Hempal sir help students on it. In 5th class students taught about referencing in the wikipedia as it is crucial part for any writer to back up there writing. In final class students were less in number because in previous class students were told to prepare themselves for the presentation about wikipedia and what they had learn from the class.

Even wikipedia class was for short time it was really helpful for them as they know how to contribute in wikipedia, type in Nepali Unicode, concept of research, referencing making userpage, article and much more. From Wikipedia education program 1 what we learn in 2 months we try to teach everything in a week for new student we feel time was not enough for us still we need to teach more for them alot. Likewise in our 1st education program in this class to we face same problem like could not make more than 6 account at a time, lost connection. Still facing those problem, we finally completed short and fast wikipedia education program to new students. I would like to thanks to our college team, Nepali Wikipedia Community, and friends, for making this event successful. 

13 anniversary wikipedia

It was my first attended anniversary of Wikipedia which was organized by Wikipedia Nepal. Event was organized at Siddhartha Cottage at 4pm, 15 January, 2014. Ganesh Sir, Saroj Sir, Krish Sir, Shrijana Mam and Kirsh sir Mrs (sorry I can't remember her name). Before I reach the venue all was set over there. After some minutes of arrival all other candidates start to join the event. 

Program start with the warm welcome from the Saroj Dhakal. He welcome our honorable guest were Prof. Tulsi Diwas, Sulochana Manandhar Dhital , Lochan lal Amatya and Nama Raj Budhathoki to take the sit. Later he introduce some past events organized by the Wikipedia Nepal which are Wikipedia education program, Women edition, Wiki love monuments. In this event I was only one of the graduate from the Wikipedia Education program which was held in Islington college.

After that ganesh poudel start to give small introduction, than start to teach how to contribute in the Wikipedia.  Now only contribute in Wikipedia he also shows a video created by krish dulal on how to make a new account on Wikipedia. Which was similar and practical that was told by ganesh Sir told.

Next Mr. saroj called on Mr. Krish Dulal and his spouse who were top contributor in Wikipedia Nepal. They share there experience and share their story on how they start to write in Wikipedia ? How they influence to write in Wikipedia? 

Later, Prof Tulsi Diwas gave a inspiring and entertaining presentation. He start to motivate our work because of our hardwork and selfness towards our work also he said "Sharing knowledge is best thing that any human can give to other".  He give us a good example of giving i.e. of witch, In Nepalese society with is considered as a bad people but in context of education witch is greatest teacher because when witch died she transfer her knowledge to her student in this way witch knowledge is still transferring from old generation to today's generation which we also must practice. Education is only things which we can give more and more to others we do not need to be worried because education can not be theft by anyone. 

Next, our another honorable guest Sulochana Mam give a presentation, while giving presentation she created a new account in Wikipedia. In event after making a account she share her one of the books in Wiki books under the license of creative commons and  also she told she will introduce her another book to wiki books as soon it will be ready. 

Coming to next Locan lal Amatya make clear on why open education is important and how wikipedia is helping to the students and every one he also flash back his teaching days where he used to read all the content from wikipedia and next day he teach to the class and students used to get surprise by saying sir knows all. 

Coming to the end of event cake was ready to celebrate the event. There were two cakes Veg and Non Veg since line was long towards the Non Veg Cage I grab a piece of cake from Veg and start to enjoy. 

Finally from this event what I learn was "Giving education is biggest things in the world".


Note: comments are appreciated :) 

Mozilla SF_Monument

Finally, today I can see my name listed in the Mozilla SF monuments. Really feels proud today as being a contributor to Mozilla. Now one of my wish will be get snap in front of the SF monument showing my name and taking picture in front of the Mozilla Headquater.  IF you wanna view your name too you can go through here http://people.mozilla.org/SF_Monument/IMAGES/front_top.jpg

My year 2013

Year 2013, was one of the best year I ever had. In year 2013, I got chance to get involve in many local communities like FOSS Nepal, Mozilla Nepal, Open Knowledge Foundation Nepal, Wikipedia Nepal, Arduino Nepal and SQA Nepal. By involving in local community, contributing and learning from these groups are one of the great achievement that I have. 

Being an IT student this communities helps me to boost up my knowledge and get chance to know about new technology and new products which I can not get in before years. 

Talking about my education I will say again a best year because I got scholarship for 2 semester, been selected from college for the Chisapani trek where only 50 students were selected which was one of the awesome trek I ever had even I get sick when we reach to the destination i.e. chisapani. 

Another one of the most memorable event was volunteer from college for the graduation ceremony which was held in Yak and Yeti Hotel. I will say it as one of the greatest and biggest event organized by the college. 

Again one of the best and biggest surprise I ever had was my childhood friend Kiren whom we meet after 15 years thanks to social media which make this possible. I nearly cried when I see her because of happiness

Will be writing more :) !! 

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