Where are the economic bills stuck?
KATHMANDU, Aug 14:
In a bid to diagnose the constraints to economic growth, the government announced reforms in the legal front through its Fiscal Budget 2014/15, which pinpointed a raft of laws to be amended.
A few of them are ready to be sent to parliament proceeding for endorsement.
A month has passed since the formal announcement but none of the bills related to the financial and the industrial sector have been registered in the bills section of parliament, except for the budget-related ones, namely the Expenditure Bill, the Domestic Borrowing Bill, Debt and Guarantee Bill and Advance Expenditure Bill. Altogether, 15 bills have been registered.
In the recent past, the whole process of submission and endorsement by the parliament of bills related to money-laundering was done overnight. But the recent crucial bills have not been submitted to the parliament as per the government´s announcement. The concerned ministries have not even submitted the bills even though they were prepared long ago.
PENDING BILLS
More than three dozen bills are pending, most of them are to be amended and a few are new laws. But they have already been formulated, like the Industrial Enterprises Bill, Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Bill, and Land Use Bill, among others.
Among the acts to be amended, the government had announced long ago it would amend those like the Labor Act, Foreign Investment and Technology Transfer Act, and Company Act.
Stakeholders have not expressed many reservations over the drafts.
A clause included in the Foreign Investment and Technology Transfer Act intends to open up investing abroad for Nepali citizens. But lobbying is still going on from different private sector representative bodies, both for and against including the clause in the amendment proposal.
The Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) was against opening up investment abroad, where as the Confederation of Nepalese Industries (CNI) is all for opening up investment abroad.
But there is separate act -- the Act to Restrict Investment Abroad, which is more responsible about whether to open up investment abroad or not, which is also in the process of amendment.
Likewise, there is a similar case in respect to the Labor Act. The draft of the bill was prepared in 2008 as per negotiations between FNCCI and trade unions. But later the government went silent about giving final touches to the draft.
Reform in the legal front is expected to remove obstruction to creating of more space for the private sector to grow.
But, the bills are pending for one reason or another where the private sector is also involved.
Endorsement of the pending bills from the parliament is a fundamental task of legal reform but the concerned ministries and the political leadership are not seen as serious about bringing the most required laws soon.
UNWILLINGNESS?
Government itself announced these reforms. But it is again the government itself that is not being seen to be serious yet about executing them.
For instance, the government announced it would amend the Public Procurement Act to ease the procurement process for expediting development work.
The development-related ministries are all for the amendment, but the Public Procurement Monitoring Office has not shown readiness to amend.
At the initiation of the Ministry of Finance, many laws, regulations and policies were slated for amended. But the concerned ministries and agencies have not embraced the spirit of legal reform as it announced through the budget.
The private sector, which is desperately waiting for the financial and industrial bills, also failed to create pressure on the political leadership and bureaucrats for early submission of the crucial bills.
´SLACKER´ MENTALITY
This delay is not seen as one by government officials, who are reputed for being able to easily escape from the crucial work, action-matrix and time-bound implementation.
They rarely announce the action matrix of implementation.
As per the general view, bureaucrats are slackers.
To repair this reputation, their work should be result-oriented rather than process oriented.
A high level official at the finance ministry requesting anonymity shared with Republica that it takes at least two weeks for one ministry to receive a response from another ministry even when almost all ministries are located inside the Singha Durbar compound and are in walking distance.
“For complete economic reform, the government should reform the administrative and regulatory front in parallel,” Nepal Rastra Bank Governor Yuba Raj Khatiwada once said.
POLITICAL LEADERSHIP
Minister for Industry Karna Bahadur Thapa has been known to talk on public forums about the Industrial Enterprises Act, and the provisions. So why has the minister not taken the bill to the parliament.
The political leadership can do it if they are determined.
The case of Minister for General Administration Lal Babu Pandit is an example of this. He announced he would sack civil servants who receive permanent residencies (PR) and Green Cards in other countries and immediately submitted a proposal for amending the Civil Services Act. The bill proposed giving civil servant a voluntary option to either leave their jobs or give up their PRs or Green Cards.
Like Pandit, the other concerned ministers and political leadership have to show their determination regarding submitting crucial bills to the parliament.
After submission, the process of endorsement will also take time. When a bill enters parliament, it will go on heading-wise discussion before voting. The concerned parliamentary committees and lawmakers give their input on the bills before endorsement.
So, the concerned ministries should submit the most required bills at the earliest.
Source: Republica
