Govt initiates process to set up infra academy

The government has taken initiative to form a body to study and make recommendations on policies for infrastructure development. The government through the budget for fiscal year 2016-17 has sought to form a National Infrastructure Policy Research Academy for the purpose. A taskforce has been formed under Govinda Nepal, chief economic adviser at the Ministry of Finance (MoF), to recommend the structure of such a body. “The government has formed a taskforce to recommend the structure [of the body] and ways to set up a support system for it,” said Surya Prasad Acharya, joint secretary at MoF. The taskforce has been given one month to make the recommendations. Another member from the MoF and one from the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure have been included in the seven-member taskforce. The other members will be chosen from among professors at universities. According to Acharya, the academy will be an independent and autonomous body and the provisions will be made under which the government will take policy recommendations made by the academy. As far as ongoing discussions are concerned, there will be little presence of the government in the academy while academicians and researchers will have higher representations. “The academy could also take inputs from thousands of thesis papers of the students of master’s degree, Mphil and PhD for making policy recommendations,” said Acharya. According to him, there discussions are also underway on ways to ensure that the academy would be an independent body. “We are also holding discussions on receiving as little support as possible from the government to run the office while encouraging it to make it sustainable through researches,” said Acharya. As the government’s focus has been on infrastructure in the recent years in order to create mass employment, the plan of establishing such an academy was announced through the budget, according to government officials. Source: ekantipur