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Kathmandu Wednesday January 23, 2002 Magh 10 2058.
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Role of private sector in Tenth Plan
underscored
PRSP would top the agenda in NDF meet
Post Report
KATHMANDU, Jan 22: In a series of pre-NDF (Nepal
Development Forum) consultation meetings, experts today discussed the role of private
sector in the Tenth Plan and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), which the government
is going to put as its main agenda in the upcoming NDF meet.
Most of the speakers expressed the views that
weak implementation of policies and programmes related with ensuring greater participation
of private sector has been a prime factor for less than expected outcomes.
They also stressed that government should be
more serious to speed up current pace of privatization, which is one of the important
processes to ensure greater private sector involvement.
"The main aim of the Tenth Plan to reduce
poverty can only be achieved through creating more employment, which is only possible with
the rapid development of private sector," they stressed.
Presenting a paper, Bhanu P Archarya, secretary
at the ministry of Industry, Commerce and Supplies said that despite increasing role of
private sector in industrial activities, it still needs to enhance capacity to cope with
the rising competition in the global market.
He also mentioned that the narrow capital base,
huge spread rate between the lending and deposit rates, heavy concentration of financial
institutions on the urban areas are the main problems of the current financial sector
reform.
He stressed on the need to initiate second
financial sector reform process immediately, which should be concentrate on enhancing
institutional capabilities of both the private and public sectors.
Dr Bimal P Koirala secretary at the Finance
Ministry, presenting a paper said that boosting privatization has been essential to
minimize soaring government financial burden. "It is an important part to expedite
liberalization and a way to boost private capital in the industrial development," he
observed.
However, he said that though the public sector
reform is expensive, the government should think of initiating inexpensive reform in PEs
to make it attractive to the private sector.
Commenting on the papers, Dr Shankar Sharma,
Member of National Planning Commission, emphasized to correct weak implementation of
polices to ensure greater participation of private sector. He also underlined the need to
correct some contradiction on the regulations related with private sector and to reduce
transaction cost by removing bureaucratic hassles.
Dr Yuba Raj Khatiwada, Chairman of Management
Association Nepal emphasized the need of prioritization of the privatization process to
improve the outcomes. He also said that the mistakes witnessed in previous privatization
process should be immediately corrected.
Jhala Nath Khanal, Leader of main opposition
CPN-UML said that most of the government policies have failed to incorporate the changes
being seen in the global era. "Lack of effective vision of development is the main
cause poor performance of the private sector," he said.
Binod Bahadur Shrestha, second vice-president of
Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry expressed his dissatisfaction
over the recent government decisions on which private sector were not properly consulted.
He urged the government to improve transparency,
implementation records and to stop frequent changes in the rules and regulations to
encourage the private sector.
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