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VOL. 28, NO. 24, March 20, 2009 (Chaitra 07 2065)
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Severe Turn
Private sector declares industries as crisis-hit and demands relief from the government
By SANJAYA DHAKAL
Unable to continue bearing the increasing burden of load shedding, unrest, insecurity, and bandhas, the private sector has declared industries as crisis hit.
Having prodded the government to declare the same for a long time, they had to do so themselves after their prodding went in vain.
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Finance Minister Dr. Bhattarai: Confronting challenges |
On Sunday, the meeting of Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI), Confederation of Nepalese Industries (CNI) and Nepal Chamber of Commerce (NCC) made the decision to declare the crisis.
“Now we will close down all the industries if the government does not immediately address our woes. We can no longer run factories. Our productions have already declined by ninety percent. We cannot continue paying wages of workers when factories remain shut,” said Surendra Bir Malakar, president of NCC.
“We were compelled to make such declaration as the government failed to address our woes. It not something that we relish, but we had no alternative,” said Kush Kumar Joshi, president of FNCCI. “After this declaration, we should be allowed to fire employees, restructure bank loans and get relief. Otherwise, we will close down industries,” he said.
The business community is piqued over what it calls as government’s one-point agenda of collecting revenue.
“In order to meet their ambitious revenue target, the government is bent on collecting revenues anyhow. They are least bothered about how the industries are coping with such an avalanche of problems,” said Malakar.
Growth Stunted
The industrial crisis is certain to hit the economic growth rate of the country. The government, in its budget, had aimed to attain seven percent growth this fiscal year. But the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) has already downscaled it to around 3.8 percent.
Even the Finance Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai has admitted that the government had failed to achieve targeted growth, but he claimed that the growth would reach close to the target.
He said that the country could still attain the growth rate of 5 per cent. This, he said, would be remarkable at a time when the rest of the world is heading into recession. CBS also claimed that the price hike would stand at 12.15 per cent, contrary to Dr Bhattarai's promise to reduce it to 7.5 per cent.
Bhaskar Raj Rajkarnicar, vice president of FNCCI, adds that in this kind of situation, the government’s growth aim is highly unlikely to be fulfilled.
“We don’t seen any reason how the target will be achieved in this situation,” he said.
Apart from industrial crisis, the government is also facing the problem in agriculture sector.
The lack of winter rainfall has alarmed agronomists. They have already said that this will affect the food security in north west region as well as cause agriculture production to drop sharply.
The deteriorating relations between the government and the private sector is also likely to hit at the government’s major policy of carrying out development plans through Public Private Partnership (PPP).
“For PPP you need a cooperative relation between the two. Here such relation is totally lacking,” said an economist.
