Attonery-General: Bill Ensures Public Enterprises Remain Relevant

The Public Enterprises Bill 2019 seeks to repeal the Public Enterprises Act 1996 to ensure legislative frameworks which regulate and govern public enterprises remain relevant.

The remarks were made by Attorney General and Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum as he moved the motion for the Bill to be considered by Parliament.

“The Bill focuses on improving corporate governance, ownership monitoring, reporting and accountability and monitoring of non-commercial obligations in order to improve the operational and financial performance of public enterprises,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.

“The Fijian Government has given an undertaking to the Asian Development Bank to carry out various structural reforms and policy changes.

"This is done in order to access policy-based financing so we are carrying out a number of reforms in that respect and modernising the laws."

He said after assessing the current act against international best practices and taking into consideration the changing dynamics of the current public enterprise portfolio and the business environment, it was imperative that legislations governing public enterprises is urgently updated and aligned to international best practices.

The motion was agreed to in Parliament yesterday.

Edited By Percy Kean

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