It’s time to shut down
The Himalayan Times
22 June 2017
It’s time to shut down
It
was encouraging news that the government is finally on the course of shutting
down the National Trading Ltd (NTL) after realizing that the NTL is eating up
people’s tax paid money in the name of meeting its operational costs which was supposed
to be covered from its profit margin “Govt on course to shut National Trading
Ltd (THT, July 20, Page 1) rather than government pouring in it billions of
rupees to keep it afloat. It was running on a huge loss for many years due to
bad management and institutionalised corruption. There was no proper
supervision and monitoring system from the government to ensure that the NTL
was properly managed and run in a business-like manner.
It
was not surprising to know that the NTL has outstanding loans amounting to 1.4
billion rupees that it owes to the government and financial institutions. Why
did the government have to wait for so many years to make decision of its
closure? Likewise, there are other government owned corporations which have
been running monetarily under huge loss. Nepal Food Corporation, Agriculture
Inputs Company and Timber Corporation among others are the white elephants of
the government which should have been closed a long time ago. It is known that
facts these public enterprises remained to be the cadres recruiting centres of
political parties. It could be the reasons for the previous governments not
wanting to shut down these enterprises.
It
seems that the time has come for the government under the changed context to
either completely close down these enterprises or merge into one to act as the
national supply company with redefined mechanism as mentioned in the 2016/17
annual budget of the government. Even doing so, the government has to rethink
whether merging into one will serve its purpose and the people since there are
many private companies which are engaged in export-import business fulfilling
the needs of the users.
Rai Biren
Bangdel
Maharajgunj,
Kathmandu
