As the government prepares the budget for Fiscal Year 2025/26 (2082/83), it has removed over 10,000 projects from the National Project Bank to focus only on implementable and result-oriented initiatives.
The National Planning Commission (NPC) deactivated the old Project Bank after observing a growing trend of ministries indiscriminately entering projects just to seek budget allocations. During a meeting of the Finance Committee under the House of Representatives on Wednesday, NPC member Dr. Prakash Kumar Shrestha said the old Project Bank has been shut down and replaced with a new one. However, well-prepared projects from the old system have been retained as a backup and transferred to the new Project Bank.
"The Project Bank had become disorganized, with more than 18,000 projects—around 11,000 of them added hastily last year, many without detailed information," Dr. Shrestha said.
According to him, over 6,200 projects have now been entered into the new Project Bank, including 3,180 new ones. Although the NPC set a deadline of mid-April for entering projects into the new system for the upcoming fiscal year, ministries are still submitting proposals.
Most of the projects currently in the new Project Bank are infrastructure-related projects. The Ministry of Urban Development has submitted the most (over 2,425 projects), followed by the Ministry of Drinking Water (2,118 projects) and the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport (over 1,100 projects).
Under the National Project Bank (Operation and Management) Standards, 2081, all government-funded projects must be registered in the Project Bank. This includes projects funded through domestic or foreign grants, loans, or public-private partnerships. Provincial and local-level national priority projects must also be included in the Project Bank.
Only projects with a budget of over Rs 30 million and those that are not part of ongoing or annual programs qualify for inclusion. The standards also require the submission of key documents, such as detailed project reports, environmental assessments, procurement plans, and land acquisition strategies.
The Project Bank was introduced to curb the practice of inserting poorly prepared, unfunded, or low-return projects into the national budget. It is also integrated with other government systems—such as the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, budget management system, e-procurement platform, and online monitoring systems coordinated by the Office of the Prime Minister—to improve transparency and coordination.
Many projects in the old Project Bank lacked necessary documentation, which led to their removal during the transition to the new system. -- RSS
