The budget, line by line
We annotated the 42-page spending plan. Nine lines matter; the rest is last year's copy with new dates.
By Pratik Adhikari
Economy deskThe council passed the plan on a 14–9 vote after a two-hour walkout. At 42 pages it is a normal budget document, which is to say the parts that matter fit on one page and the rest performs continuity.
Line 11 is the water subsidy the finance ministry says ends Sunday — it carries no ending mechanism, so the ministry will simply stop transferring, and the departments will notice when the invoices go unpaid in the fifth month.
Lines 19 through 27 fund the road programme. Three of those nine lines name the same contractor the ward roads investigation named. The approving officer is the same signature we wrote about last week; nobody has replied to either letter.
The annotations are markers, not opinions: where the money goes, what the corresponding line said last year, and where the two disagree. The full marked-up plan is linked at the bottom, with the original next to it.
“Line 11 carries no ending mechanism. The subsidy just stops, and the invoices notice first.”