FM asks PEs for operational plan
KATHMANDU:
Finance Ministry has asked the Public Enterprises (PEs) to submit operational plan before seeking loan.
“The ministry has decided to ask for operational plan after realising that granting loan to Public Enterprises is not ultimate solution,” joint secretary at the Public Enterprises Coordination Division Ram Sharan Pudasaini said.
“The ministry will monitor whether they are following their operational plan submitted by them or not, before granting them loan,” he said, adding that the most of the PEs have been victimised of the regular political bickering and gross mismanagement. “It will not release loan to PEs unless they submit their operational details,” Pudasaini added.
The ministry has been strict with the public entities which has less than satisfactory performance.
The Finance Ministry is also not in a mood to release loans as the government’s Austerity measure has specifically mentioned that the PEs cannot always be fed by the ministry. Public entities should submit their operational plan including marketing, capital management, internal management, and product plans alongwith technological aspects of their respective industries.
Public enterprises need to prepare operational plan to cope up with the challenges posed by free market competition too, he said, adding that public enterprises should be ready to compete with private sector, if they want to sustain in the market.
However, the ministry released Rs 40 million and 30 million to Janakpur Cigarette Factory and Nepal Drugs Ltd, respectively recently.
The ministry released the fund for salary and Dashain allowance to those public enterprises, Pudasaini informed. “Financial health of most of the public enterprises is not good and they can not even pay salary to their staff.”
Like always, in the beginning of this fiscal year, the Finance Ministry had decided to monitor Public Enterprises more effectively as the poor financial performance of Public Enterprises has been hitting the government coffer hard.
Currently, there are 34 public enterprises in operation. Of them, 22 public enterprises were in profit and 14 public enterprises were in loss in the fiscal year 2009-10, according to the Finance Ministry.
Source: THT
