The government is going to merge Board of Investment and Privatisation Commission to reduce state expenditure, Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) sources said.
These two state agencies have become known for their ineffectiveness over the years.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina already directed the authority concerned to start the process.
PMO sent a letter to the Cabinet Division Secretary M Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan yesterday in this regard.
The secretary however said yesterday that he got verbal directive but was yet to receive any letter from the PMO.
“We will act after receiving letter from the PMO.”
The letter said merger of two agencies would be good for the development of the country’s investment and business sectors and asked the cabinet division to take necessary steps.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is the ex-officio chairman of the two bodies.
The BOI and PC were supposed to play the pivotal role to attract foreign and local investments in the country but displayed complete failure in last two years, official sources said, adding that officials of these two government agencies were now sitting idle.
But PC officials said the ministries and divisions didn’t listen to the suggestions of the two bodies, and that’s why the bodies could not work to attract investment.
They said PC and BOI had to wait for Prime Minister’s intervention in most of the cases.
There have differences for long between ministries and PC regarding privatisation of state-owned enterprises under the ministries.
PC has always alleged that the ministries had never taken any initiative to make the loss-making firms profitable.
Finance Ministry officials said the ministry took several attempts to close the Privatisation Commission as per the directive of PMO. However it later changed the decision.
In 1993, the government constituted Privatisation Board, which was changed to Privatisation Commission in 2000.
At present, a total of 70 officials and staffs are working at the Privatisation Commission and the government spent Tk17 crore during last four years, and no state firms were privatised during the period.
BOI was established in 1989 to increase local and foreign investments in the country. The Board started with 495 staff and of them, 359 posts are now vacant.
According to a World Bank study, the private sector investment declined by 1.2% in 2013. Achievement of 7.2% growth as per the government target in the current fiscal is at risk.
According to BoI, the investment situation improved a little in last January but went down by Tk30bn in February.
