Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, June 26 2009:
Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) has asked the State Government to repay the loan amounts taken by public sector undertakings from the plan amount.
These overdue loans were taken with the Government of Manipur as guarantor during 1985-86 .
Some of the public sector undertakings which took loans from LIC with the State Government as guarantor included Manipur Tribal Development Corporation (MTDC), Planning and Development Authority (PDA), Minority and Other Backward Classes (MOBC) and Manipur Apex Housing Corporation, informed an official source.
The loan amount indebted to MTDC, calculated together with interests for all these years stands at around Rs 4 crores and the amount indebted to PDA is around Rs 20 crores.
MOBC owes around Rs 60 lakhs to LIC as another Rs 20 crores is indebted to Manipur Apex Housing Corporation.
In aggregate, these public sector undertakings owe around Rs 44.60 crores to LIC.
Following the failure of these public sector undertakings to repay the loans all these years, LIC has written to the Finance Department seeking repayment of the loans from the annual plan amount meant for investment in welfare and development programmes.
As a rule, all public sector undertakings should conduct annual audit and furnish account statements to the Finance Department .
But most of these public sector undertakings lacked fiscal discipline and they failed to furnish annual account statements.
As such, the Government has little knowledge about the financial conditions of these public sector undertakings.
It is due to absence of fiscal discipline that these undertakings could not repay the loan amounts, added the source.