No to unruly expansion of public corporations

The government is opposed in principle to the unchecked expansion of public corporations. Subsidiaries are to be set up only when they are required for newly announced national projects.

Guidelines will be finalized in February to streamline a total of 42 such affiliates through privatization, merger or liquidation.

These plans were announced by the Ministry of Planning and Budget Friday. The blueprint calls for privatizing subsidiaries of public corporations that are no longer performing their due function, and absorbing into their parent firms affiliates that are unable to stand on their own. Nonviable subsidiaries are to be shuttered.

A manpower pool and an appraisal board will also be created to recruit and appoint qualified chief executive officers (CEOs) to public corporations. The director of the finance reform task force under the ministry said that penalties would be meted out to government departments and public corporations that fail to live up to the required standards for reform. The penalties may include disincentives or cuts in budgetary appropriations.