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PUBLIC organisations that do not settle their accounts with other public bodies or private ones, have been standing in the way of better functioning of the public sector as a whole. The defaulter public organisations sometimes face formidable difficulties in clearing or servicing their debts. But the difficulties, in many cases, are their own making ; these bodies cannot, therefore, expect a sympathetic attitude towards their default status. Besides, there ought not to be sympathy or undue consideration shown to defaulters of any category for the simple reason of the streamlined and efficient functioning of the economy. Usually, defaulters in the private sector are scorned in the media and hard demands are made on them to service their non performing loans. But the opposite is the case in respect of the public sector where many such entities with even adequate resourceful conditions deliberately withhold payment of their dues to other public sector bodies pushing the latter into serious financial and consequently other problems.
Biman Bangladesh is a case in point. The national flag carrier has been a losing concern for long mainly due to unconcern or corruption of its management. It was expertly assessed several times that the airline could be a profit earner in no time with better management. But the lack of profit does not mean that it cannot at all service its debts. It has good and regular earnings to go on at least partly but regularly paying off its debts. But its management has been gripped by the traditional mentality that it does not have to bother with paying anything in the way of debts if the recipient is a government owned body. Thus, it has not been paying month after month for the jet fuel it procured from the state-run Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC). The BPC has been suffering unbearable financial problems as a result. The adviser in charge of the relevant ministry was, therefore, compelled to stop supply of jet fuel to Biman. He appeared to have stepped harder on the pedal last Saturday when he demanded immediate cash payment from Biman to clear most of the arrears as the minimum precondition for resuming supply of fuel to the national carrier. It is likely that the pressure tactic will work and Biman will somehow scrape up the cash in its bid to avoid complete shutting down. The experience is also likely to awaken Biman's management to try and run the organisation better to avoid facing similar crisis situations in the future.
The move initiated by the energy adviser is in the right direction, and needs to be adopted by other public bodies with their massive unserviced debts. They can employ similar pressure on their debtors to good effect to have their dues settled within a rational period of time. There are public utility organisations like the Dhaka Electricity Supply Authority (DESA) and the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) that have huge claims against their public and private sector clients. The non-payment of their dues by these defaulting clients has been creating enormous troubles for these organisations in balancing their budgets or to take up routine maintenance and development works. The utility bodies are seen somewhat proactive nowadays in collecting their dues from private clients. But there seems to be no such enthusiasm in doing the same in relation to their customers in the public sector. But the utility bodies can much improve the state of their financial health and operational effectiveness by going for the same approach that the energy adviser has taken against Biman. There is a very pressing need for all public organisations to become conscious in varying degrees and take realistic measures with reasonable hope of success to get their dues settled by the defaulting organisations.
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