Public enterprises make faltering picture

The performance of public enterprises weakened over the 2007/08 fiscal year, as 15 companies suffered losses leading to a decline in the volume of combined profits.

The Ministry of Finance (MoF), releasing a Yellow Book, projected that the enterprises earned a profit of three billion rupees during the fiscal year, as compared to eight billion rupees in the 2006/07 fiscal year.

It said mounting losses made by NOC was the prime cause to bring down the combined profits of the corporations. In the 2007/08 fiscal year, the oil supplier was projected to have suffered losses amounting to Rs 7.18 billion.

The eight billion rupees combined profits that the public enterprises managed to make in the 2006/07 fiscal year was a two-fold improvement on the profits made in the year before that.

In 2006/07, seven companied together paid combined dividends of nearly one billion rupees to the government. During the year, Nepal Telecom (NT) and the Agricultural Development Bank, Nepal (ADB/N) earned profits of six billion rupees and a billion rupees respectively.

Over the 2007/08 fiscal year, the public service providing enterprises like NT and Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) did not do any better. MoF said NT's profit is expected to be more or less same, while NEA is expected to suffer a loss of a billion rupees.
Source: eKantipur