April 7: The National Development Action Committee (NDAC) has directed the Arrears Clearance Committee to clear arrears of the time before the enforcement of federalism within a year.    
The 50th meeting of the NDAC held at the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers on Thursday directed the committee to clear the arrears of district development committees and education offices that were in place before the country adopted federalism. Similarly, the arrears at province and local levels have to be cleared on time, the meeting stressed.    
 During the meeting, Vice-Chairman of the National Planning Commission, Dr Min Bahadur Shrestha, presented a 17-point proposal on resolving the problems faced in course of the country’s development. Questions were raised on existing Public Procurement Regulation, 2064 which discourages small construction entrepreneurs from participating in bidding process. Whether the regulation could be amended was also discussed during the meeting.    
Similarly, the public procurement monitoring office has been asked to submit a report on contract ceiling, tender cost, and bidding duration.    
The Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation has been directed to coordinate with Finance Ministry and Nepal Rastra Bank to regulate the cooperatives for solving the problems surfaced lately in this sector.    
Moreover, the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration has been directed to ensure adequate human resources at province and local levels so that service delivery and development works would not be hampered.    

Various other issues such as revenue sharing between province and local levels on natural resources, need of formulating laws on it, arrangement of G2G scheme to purchase chemical fertilizer, problems of technical institutes and trainers, handover of technical institutes under CTEVT, amendment of law on permission needed from Division Forest Office to cut trees on construction works were also discussed.    
Moreover, unplanned settlements, acquisition of land for construction works, and industrial estate were raised as pressing issue in the meeting. -- RSS