The State government has reconstituted the Public Sector Restructuring and Internal Audit Board (RIAB) as the Board for Public Sector Transformation (BPT), as per the recommendations of an expert committee headed by former Chief Secretary Paul Antony, which had last year submitted a report on granting autonomy with accountability to public sector units in the State.
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K. Ajith Kumar, former Executive Director of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) Kochi Refinery, has been appointed as the Chairman of BPT, while P. Sathish Kumar, the current Managing Director of Kerala Ceramics, has been appointed as the Member Secretary. Industries Minister P. Rajeeve said that the formation of BPT is an important step in modernising the public sector.
RIAB was formed in 1990 for auditing and accounting of public sector units. It was later empowered supervisory powers. One of its major objectives was to supervise the activities of public sector institutions and provide support in technical, financial and management areas. The committee headed by Paul Antony had recommended giving operational autonomy with accountability to public sector organisations, based on which the decision to reorganise RIAB has been taken. In addition to the Chairman and Member Secretary, the Principal Secretary of the Industries department and three experts are members of the Board. The government will later nominate expert members from the fields of management, finance and technology.
Other recommendations
The Industries department has charted a series of meetings with other departments and agencies to explore the implementation of the other recommendations of the Paul Antony committee. As per the recommendations, the companies should be able to redeploy its employees, phase out outdated posts and decommission outdated machinery, take up capital expenditure, fix prices on its products and implement voluntary retirement schemes.
The committee also recommended powers for the PSUs to enter into joint ventures. The government should make clear beforehand its expectations from each PSU. It should take the policy decision and leave the powers for day-to-day decisions to the PSU director board. Each PSU should enter into an MoU with the Government with expectations for the year, which will be evaluated at the end of the year.