MoI stops verification of 'sick' industries

The Ministry of Industry (MoI), which is entrusted to carry out a technical study of self-declared ´sick industries´, has shelved its fact-finding field study of those industries after Ministry of Finance (MoF) denied it necessary budget.
"The technical committee can´t go in the field to cross check the information provided by the industrialists," Ek Narayan Bhandari, section officer at the MoI, who is also a member of the technical committee, told Republica. "The committee has already completed off-site study of those industries. To assess their actual status, we were required to visit their sites."
The MoI had sought Rs 2.6 million to conduct the study for verifying claims made by 27 ´sick industries´. But the finance ministry, citing legal provisions of one-third budget, refused to provide the fund.
Though the government had incorporated a program to provide relief to the sick industries in 2011/12, it had not made any allocations under the heading. The government has no authority to allocate budget to any new program since the budget for this fiscal year is just one-third of the actual expenditure of the previous fiscal year, said Durgesh Pradhan, under secretary at the finance ministry.
The MoI officials, however, said they have a pressure to finish the field study and come up with the final list of sick industries as the prime minister has continued to push for the early implementation of the relief packages.
The government has prepared a report that suggests what sorts of relief packages should be provided to the sick industries to breathe new life into them. But it has not yet identified parameters to judge whether or not a given industry is sick.
Owing to the lack of such parameters and also the lack of budget, the MoI officials said they won´t be able to finalize the list of actual sick industries soon.