Participatory approach in Tenth Plan stressed

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KATHMANDU, Sept 10 - Experts and planners gathered at a national level interaction programme have stressed the need to accelerate participatory development approach to achieve sole poverty reduction objectives of the upcoming Tenth Plan.

Speaking in the programme organized by the National Planning Commission (NPC) with an aim to discuss the newly released Approach Paper of Tenth Plan and incorporate expertise views on the final draft, they urged the government to strengthen its monitoring and evaluating capability to realize the outcomes of the investments.

Highlighting the major aspect of the approach-paper Prithvi Raj Ligal, Vice Chairman of the NPC, said that the paper has specially stressed to encourage local people’s participation on the development activities. "Participatory approach of the local people in the development activities and making them aware about their responsibility to ensure sustainability of such activities are some of the major sectors to be focused on the Tenth Plan."

He also said that the plan will also focus on the role of private sector on the resource mobilization and delivery of service to the people.

Expressing concern over the fact that some regions and certain community of the country are still out of the ongoing development process, he said that the government is determined to bring some especial and targeted programs to bring such region and community into the main development stream. Vice Chairman Ligal also underlined the need of good governance to make the anti-poverty programs result-oriented.

Presenting the preliminary draft of the Tenth Plan, Dr Shankar Sharma, Member of NPC highlighted focus areas of the plan and added that the upcoming plan will be different from the previous plans in the sense that majority of the programs of Tenth Plan will be focused on poverty reduction.

He also presented a brief evaluation of the ongoing Ninth Plan and said that the overall achievement of the Ninth Plan is moderate. "The overall economic growth during the Ninth Plan will be less than 5 per cent against the target of 6 per cent mainly due to less-than-expected performance of both the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors."

Referring to the targets and achievements in the social sector, he also said that the outcomes of the health and education sectors are poor. "The major cause of such performance is either due to lack of budget or due to the management failure."

He also admitted that some of the programs of the Ninth Plan was ambitious and was not correlated with the long-term development strategies. "Of the total agricultural related program of the Ninth Plan, around 40 per cent were not even mentioned in the Agricultural Prospective Plan (APP)- the 20-years agricultural development plan of the government."

He also blamed that the week monitoring mechanism of the development projects has hindered in achieving targeted poverty reduction and said the Tenth Plan will have a strong monitoring system.

Participating on the discussion, Dr Dilli Raj Khanal, Lawmaker of the Main Opposition CPN-UML said that most of the pro-poor programs of the Ninth Plan were not implemented due to which the poverty rate has not declined satisfactorily. He also seriously questioned the claim of NPC that the poverty rate has been declined to 38 per cent from 42 per cent recorded in the beginning of the Ninth Plan. "How can the poverty rate can come down when the performances of almost all the anti-poverty programs is extremely poor?" he asked.

Similarly, Mohan Man Saiju, former vice chairman of NPC flayed the paper on the ground that it has failed to address the emerging challenges posed by the ongoing economic transformation. "Lack of focus and priority programs to maximize the limited resources and overlapping of policies, strategies, instruments and goals are some of the serious shortcomings of the paper," he said.

Dr Minendra Rijal said that lack of proper coordination between the strategy and programs and low growth rate in the agricultural sector is the principal cause of the poor achievement in the poverty reduction. He also stressed on the need of risk sharing policy to attract private investment in more extensive way.

Bad debt, weak management deteriorate Nepal Bank Ltd

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KATHMANDU, Sept 10 - Deputy Governor (DG) of Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) Ram Babu Pant has attributed the causes of weak financial condition of Nepal Bank Limited (NBL) to poor loan recovery, weak management and divided board of directors.

Owing to a lack of corporate governance, and accountable and transparent accounting system, the financial sector reform programme had to be implemented, expressing the hope that the reform process would restore the financial health of the bank.

Speaking at an interaction on financial sector reform in context with NBL organized by the Society of Economic Journalists-Nepal (SEJON) here today, he said that as the Terms of Reference of the management and the board of directors are not clearly defined, it has been causing problem in the implementation of the process.

The Deputy Governor also said that House disruption has delayed the passage of the Bills on Nepal Rastra Bank Act and Loan Recovery Act, which has delayed the reform process. He claimed that in order to recover bad debt, NRB has been making efforts to strengthen the Credit Information Bureau.

Raising concerns over the unscrupulous news items regarding the financial health of the NBL, he urged political leaders and other concerned officials to disseminate correct news and asked the press to report objectively, thereby helping the reform process to succeed.

He also said that due to insecurity, many branches of the bank have been closed which not only cause inconvenience to the customers but also is damaging the image of the bank. In order to avoid the problem, political commitment is a must, he added.

He also informed the press that an independent body has begun the study of NBL.

Former director of NBL and economist Dr Bishwambhar Pyakurel also blamed the weak management, lack of human resource development, marketing strategy and risky investment for the deteriorating financial condition of the bank.

It is unfortunate that even today the exact amount of bad debt is not known. Unless the political situation improves, it would be almost impossible to implement financial sector reform. He also urged the NRB and NBL to expidite the reform process.

Rajendra Kumar Khetan, Director of the bank, said that the news regarding the weak financial condition has been exaggerated which has made its clientele scary, but the bank is not in cash loss, despite deteriorating financial condition.

The main problem of the bank is loan recovery. If just 20 big parties repay the loans, the bank would regain its financial condition, but the KPMG report has not suggested any measures to recover its bad loans, he said.

About Rs 5 billion loan has been recovered within a couple of months starting April and if the trend continues, the bank would be in its previous position within a year, he claimed.

Laxmi Bahadur Shrestha, another director of NBL claimed that the financial condition of the bank is not so bad as it has been painted. There is a need to reorganize various departments, discipline employees , redifine union’s role and to control corruption, he said.

The bank’s deposit is very good and efforts are on to improve loan recovery, but the external factors like political disturbance has affected the entire economy and it has impacted the banking sector as well, he added.

Hotline service to check adulteration in food items

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KATHMANDU, Sept 10 - With an aim to address the growing complaints of the consumer regarding adulteration in the food items, the Department of Food Technology and Quality Control has started a hotline service.

In its latest attempt to provide relief to the consumers after it received hundreds of inquiry about the quality of the food items available in the market, the department was coerced to initiate the hotline telephone service.

The complaints of the consumers increased rapidly after the department released its annual report of the last fiscal year, in which majority of the food-item ranging from the cooking oil to bottled mineral water were found contaminated posing a serious threat on public health.

The consumers can now call on 262741 and can register their complaint with the name of the item and its producer, if they suspects the particular goods bought from the market is of low standard. The department has also assured the consumers that the name of complainer would be kept top secret.

Dr Tika Bahadur Karki, Director General of the department hopes that the initiation of such service for the first time in Nepal, can be a milestone in protecting consumer right. "The newly introduced service can be helpful in controlling adulteration to some extent but the effectiveness of the service depends on the responses of the consumers," he told The Kathmandu Post.

He also assured that the department would immediately initiate necessary investigation after it receives complaints from the consumer and would take appropriate steps for the legal action against the producers if found acting against the existing food Act.

However, consumers will have to pay investigation charge if they come to the department to register the complaint along with the samples of the food-items. Dr Karki suggests that the financial burden of the charge can be minimized by sharing it among the members of community or group. If the consumers repose well, then it would be helpful to activate the role of the department in controlling adulteration of the food-items.