KATHMANDU, Sept 16: After much fuss, the government has provided Rs 800,000 to the Ministry of Industry (MoI) to conduct a field study of industries that claimed themselves as being ´sick´ and filed applications for relief package.
The technical team that has been formed at the MoI to study the actual status of the industries and check the authenticity of the information provided by more than two dozens such industries will soon begin the field study of those industries.
“We have received a portion of budget that we sought for from the Ministry of Finance (MoF),” Anil Kumar Thakur, joint secretary at the MoI, told Republica. The MoI which is entrusted to carry out the ´relief program to sick industries´ had requested Rs 2.6 million from the MoF to conduct the field study of the self-declared sick industries.
According to Thakur, around 30 firms have applied at the ministry to get relief package that the government is set to provide after identifying their status.
The MoF had expressed reluctance to allocate budget to the MoI referring to the existing one-third budget and constrains it faced in providing budget to new programs. But it released the budget after Finance Minister Barsha Man Pun through ministerial decision instructed the budget division to release the funds, considering the importance of the MoI´s program.
The government had been promising relief package to the sick industries since 2011/12, but the program has not yet been implemented due to a lack of clear definition and parameters to judge the genuine sick industries.
Last year, the government prepared an extensive report suggesting different types of relief packages to the sick industries to revive them. The MoI is presently working to finalizing the list of actual sick industries.
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