Cabinet agrees to disband two units set up by last Govt.

• National Agency for Public-Private Partnership to wind up
• Policy Development Office which operated under former PM to also close down

By Chandani Kirinde 

Cabinet on Tuesday approved a proposal to direct the Secretary to the Treasury to take measures to wind up the National Agency for Public-Private Partnership, which was set up by the previous Government in 2017. 

Prime Minister and Finance Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa

The proposal by Prime Minister and Finance Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa said that with the measures taken by the new Government to amalgamate the workings of several agencies, there was no need for this unit to continue to operate.

The National Agency for Public-Private Partnership was established through a proposal made by former Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera to function as an independent institution with adequate legal, administrative and financial powers, instead of the Public-Private Partnership Division which had functioned at the Ministry of Finance.

Its function was to select projects based on a public-private collaboration, oversee their implementation and provide guidance to ministries and other government institutions in regard to such projects.

Meanwhile, Cabinet on Tuesday also decided to close the Policy Development Office (PDO) which operated under the office of former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

The proposal to close the office was presented to Cabinet by Prime Minister Rajapaksa.

The PDO was established through a Cabinet decision dated October 2015 with several objectives to develop national policies, review economic policies, analyse and evaluate economic development, review the effectiveness of domestic policies, monitor external factors that would affect the development of Sri Lanka and assess their impact on the country’s development.