Wagle to head PE Mgmt Board

KATHMANDU, Jan 30: 

The government has appointed former secretary Bimal Wagle as the chairman of soon-to-be-formed Public Enterprises (PE) Management Board, a semi-autonomous umbrella body that will regulate and oversee management of all state-owned enterprises in the country.

Wagle was among six candidates who had applied for the post. Of the six competitors, names of three best candidates were forwarded to the cabinet by a five-member committee headed by Dr Kayo Devi Yami, acting chief of Public Service Commission. 

Wagle, however, refrained from making comment on his appointment. “I´ll feel more comfortable talking to the press a week after joining the office,” he told Republica on Sunday.

Along with Wagle, the cabinet has also appointed four other members to the board of directors of the Management Board. They are: Dr Laxmi Bhakta Silpakar, Rajeshwor Prasad Sharma, an engineer, Sitaram Aryal, also an engineer, and Narayan Bajaj, a chartered accountant. A total of 13 applicants had vied for these posts.

“All of the newly appointed members will start working from next week,” a high-ranking official of the Ministry of Finance said.

The government, however, has yet to finalize the location of the new office for the PE Management Board.

The management board is being formed as per the vision envisaged by the PE Management Board (Formation and Operations) Order issued by Prime Minister Babu Ram Bhattarai last month. Once the Board is formed, it will be completely responsible for overseeing, monitoring and regulating all 36 PEs in the country - a task which is currently being handled by line ministries under which respective state-owned enterprises fall.

The board will also recommend necessary reform measures to the government to enhance the performance of all public enterprises. It will also be responsible for prescribing suitable restructuring models such as merger, public-private partnership or liquidation, among others, to enhance the efficiency of public enterprises, ranging from cigarette manufacturing and cement industries to media houses, which have received over Rs 231 billion in government investment but have piled up huge losses, turning them into liabilities for the state.

One of the primary reasons for the worsening condition of PEs is political intervention in selection process of chiefs of state-owned firms, which is done not on merit basis but on personal relationship of politicians.

This practice is expected to end once the Board is formed as it will have the authority to remove all chief executives and board members of all PEs who were handpicked and replace them with those selected through open competition.

Source: Republica