Lankan cricket governing board among loss making enterprises

Colombo: Sri Lanka`s cricket governing body, two government owned airlines and a television house are among the 45 state enterprises that have been founds to be loss making by a parliamentary committee.

The Parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprise (COPE) has recommended stringent accounting measures in order to maintain smooth administration and better accounting procedures in its report submitted in Parliament on Thursday. Senior minister D E W Gunasekera, the chair of the committee, said he hoped that the chief accounting officers would take note of the directives indicated in the 176 page report. His committee had scrutinised 229 state enterprises out of which 45 have been proved to be making losses. The loss making institutions include the two state owned airlines, television house and the island`s cricket governing body. He noted however some of the state enterprises were making losses due to inadequate capitalisation. Gunasekera called for more powers to summon former heads of state run institutions before COPE as well as bring under its preview private limited companies incorporated under the Companies Act. He said that parliament`s high posts committee should do more scrutiny of the eligibility of persons who are appointed as heads of state corporations, departments and state owned authorities. They ought to be academically qualified as well as professionally qualified, he said. The Committee categorised the institutions into four groups namely those functioning profitably, those functioning at break even avoiding loss but failing to make a profit, those institutions whose revenue is dwindling and those institutions which running at a loss, Gunasekera said. PTI