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Bengal plans `restructuring' of State-owned enterprises

Our Bureau

KOLKATA, Feb. 11

THE West Bengal Government is carrying out an assessment of the State public sector undertakings and corporations under its control, Mr Mrinal Banerjee, State Minister for Public Enterprises and Industrial Reconstruction, said here.

Talking to Business Line, he said that the exercise was already on and the idea was to carry out a restructuring after making a realistic assessment of these undertakings.

The studies are being conducted by the `Strategic Business Experts Group' (SBEG) which was set up four years ago, when a senior trade union leader from Durgapur belt, was entrusted with the job of looking after these two departments.

``We will induct some more professionals, mainly with accounting backgrounds, into the SBEG for this purpose'', he said.

Mr Banerjee did not rule out the possibility of the Government arriving at some hard decisions on these units based on the findings of the SBEG, but said that closure would only be the last resort. ``Our aim would be to discover the malaise and try to re ctify them as has been done in the case of the 23 undertakings under the department''.

Industry department sources say that losses of the undertakings being controlled by the Government have been on the rise and their 1998-99 audited results show that the losses of 42 undertakings totalled Rs 1,000 crore. Apart from the State power underta kings, the other heavy losers were the transport sector companies.

The bottomline of undertakings was exerting further pressure on the Government's finances after the increase in employee costs on account of the implementation of the Fourth Pay Commission and an interim relief for the public undertakings. Together, the 65 companies whose performance was being brought under the scanner provided employment to over one lakh persons.

The State Government's exposure to these companies have been huge, running into crores of rupees by way of equity capital, loans and grants.

Referring to the units under the PU department, Mr Banerjee said that while eight of these have already been turned around, two more are expected to be revived in the current fiscal. He reiterated that this was possible mainly with the monitoring being d one by the SBEG as also through the co-operation of the employees. ``The micro level supervision and technical advice co-ordinated by the SBEG coupled with focus on issues such as synergy, quality, and HRD of these units have helped the Government impro ve the performance of these units'', according to Mr Banerjee.