Government committed to strong public sector: Manmohan Singh

NEW DELHI - The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, on Wednesday said that the Central Government is committed to a strong public sector in many areas of the economy.

Presenting the MoU Excellence and SCOPE awards here, Dr. Singh said: “Our Government is committed to a strong public sector in many areas of our economy. In some sectors there is also a need for public sector enterprises to explore global opportunities. The Government is working on a policy to support our public sector enterprises in this effort.

“We are also conscious of the need to ensure the highest standards of corporate accountability in our public sector. We are one of the very few countries in the world that have implemented a mandatory Code of Corporate Governance for their public sector enterprises,” he added.

He further said that our public sector enterprises sometimes feel constrained by the need to follow utmost transparent processes, which may at times impede speedy decision making.

“However, we have been attempting to give increasing autonomy and flexibility to our public sector enterprises,” he added

Emphasizing the need for improving productivity both in our public and private sector, Dr Singh said: “For public sector enterprises to survive in increasingly competitive, they must make use of new technology and pay attention to improving corporate governance.

Indeed by doing so they will contribute to strengthening our economy and our country.”

“We must ensure that a vibrant private sector does not deprive our PSEs of our best talent,” he added

“The Government has put in place an improved system of remuneration. But, the overall working environment in the company has now become an equally important factor for attracting and retaining employees. We must ensure proper succession planning in our companies,” he said.

“We must therefore ensure that we are able to recruit bright young men and women into public sector jobs, and must have the ability to retain them there. I would urge the ministries and the public sector leadership to give serious attention to human resource development issues at all levels,” he added. (ANI)