Himal Press 
Photo: RSS
KATHMANDU: The annual budget for the fiscal year 2026/27 will be presented from the multi-purpose hall of the under-construction federal parliament building on Friday, as the new House of Representatives chamber is still not ready for use.
The Federal Parliament Secretariat said a joint meeting of the House of Representatives and the National Assembly has been scheduled for 4 pm at the multi-purpose hall in the new parliament complex at Singha Durbar, where Minister for Finance Dr Swarnim Wagle will present the annual revenue and expenditure estimates of the new fiscal year.
The Secretariat had earlier announced that the new House of Representatives chamber would be ready to host the joint session for the budget presentation. However, officials later decided to continue using the multi-purpose hall after finishing works in the main chamber could not be completed on time.
Federal Parliament Secretariat spokesperson Ekram Giri said that although preparations had been made to conduct the joint session in the new House chamber, the venue could not be used as finishing works were still underway.
He also said constitutional office-bearers, senior government officials, and heads and representatives of diplomatic missions based in Nepal have not been invited to the budget session due to space constraints.
The Federal Parliament Building project has faced years of delay. The government signed a contract in October 2019 with Tundi-Seok JV, a joint venture between Nepal’s Tundi Construction and China’s SEEC Construction, to complete the civil construction of the parliament building within three years at Rs 5.02 billion. A separate contract for interior furnishing and conferencing systems was awarded to KC-Shyamsundar-Baniya JV.
House of Representatives meetings are currently being held at the multi-purpose hall of the under-construction parliament building after the ICC Convention Centre, which had been leased by the Federal Parliament Secretariat for parliamentary meetings, was vandalised and set on fire during protests in September last year.
