Nepal, May 29 -- The government has prioritised job creation as unemployment is expected to see a surge as an immediate impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Presenting the budget for the fiscal year 2020-21 on Thursday, Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada announced an ambitious plan of creating more than 700,000 jobs through various programmes.

For creating jobs, the government has been heavily counting on the Prime Minister Employment Programme (PMEP). The budget allocation for the programme, which aims to provide a minimum 100-days of waged-employment to unemployment, has been doubled to Rs11.6 billion with the aim of providing 200,000 jobs in the next year.

"Keeping in mind the fact that jobs of citizens within and outside the country ha...