The government has allocated Rs 1.5 million in the new budget to carry out a study to identify sick industries in the country with an aim of reviving and rehabilitating them. "The Finance Ministry has given us sufficient fund to conduct a comprehensive study that will help identify sick industries," Yam Kumari Khatiwada, joint secretary at the Ministry of Industry (MoI), told Republica. However, the government has not proposed any specific program for revival of the sick industries. "There is no budget as such to provide relief to the sick industries," Khatiwada said. "The government will coordinate with the banking and financial institutes to provide relief to them." The then government had announced ´sick industries revival program´ under its Immediate Relief Program (IRP) in last September among 243 other programs. The Dr Baburam Bhattarai-led government had formed a high-level taskforce to revive and rehabilitate sick industries under the leadership of the then vice chairperson of National Planning Commission, Dipendra Bahadur Kshetry. The MoI, which later got the responsibility of carrying out the study of firms that applied to get status of sick-industries, has layers of different committees formed in order to identify whether the applicants are actually sick or not. "We conduct the study at different levels -- from field to financial study," Khatiwada said. "The technical committee has already completed field study of a total of 12 firms." According to Khatiwada, a total of 37 firms have applied to get status of sick industry from the government. The government that announced a program to revive the sick industries has not been able to lay out the actual criteria to declare whether a firm is sick or not. In last fiscal year, the MoI had recommended the council of ministers to declare three firms as ´sick´. But the cabinet led by Interim Election Council chairman Khil Raj Regmi declined to do so. "The firms that want to get status of sick industry should at lease be in operation," said Finance Minister Shankar Prasad Koirala. The cabinet had directed MoI to recommend such firms, which are in operation. According to Khatiwada, the MoI is in the process to recommend two ´sick´ firms to the cabinet. "These two firms are in operation," she said. The government´s move to revive sick industries has also been hindered due to the absence of parliament to enact new Industrial Act, which has already been drafted. The existing Industrial Act- 1992 does not have any specific provision to revive sick industries.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Jul 2013 07:07:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015