Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says many state en­ter­pris­es are fail­ing in achiev­ing their man­dates and some are in need of se­ri­ous gov­er­nance re­form.

In the fea­ture ad­dress at the Min­istry of Fi­nance's an­nu­al State Boards Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance Sem­i­nar at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley said while state en­ter­pris­es have a crit­i­cal role to play in de­liv­er­ing goods and ser­vices to the coun­try, too many of them were miss­ing the mark in terms of per­for­mance.

"We al­so need to face the harsh re­al­i­ty that, gen­er­al­ly, too many of our state-owned en­ter­pris­es have been un­der­per­form­ing–some much more than oth­ers. Some might even have de­vi­at­ed so far from their orig­i­nal pur­pose as to be­come the prob­lem they were cre­at­ed to solve."

The prime min­is­ter added that though a chal­lenge, Gov­ern­ment had ded­i­cat­ed it­self to treat­ing with the per­for­mance re­lat­ed is­sues at all state en­ter­pris­es.

"This gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to ad­dress­ing the per­for­mance is­sues of all our state en­ter­pris­es, de­fault­ing or oth­er­wise. We do so, in part, by re­form­ing the way they are gov­erned. In oth­er words, we need to re-ex­am­ine our cor­po­rate gov­er­nance struc­tures as they re­late to the state sec­tor," he said.

Dr Row­ley added that to com­bat the is­sue of poor­ly per­form­ing state en­ter­pris­es, a shift in at­ti­tudes is a nec­es­sary step in the cor­po­rate gov­er­nance strength­en­ing process with the Min­istry of Fi­nance tak­ing the lead.

"For cer­tain, the prob­lem al­so in­volves at­ti­tu­di­nal changes to our du­ties. It is against an un­der­stand­ing of this as­pect of our chal­lenges in this sec­tor why on­ly re­cent­ly the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance saw it fit and very nec­es­sary to is­sue a stern cir­cu­lar mem­o­ran­dum to all man­age­ment and boards in the state en­ter­prise sec­tor that the time­ly sub­mis­sion of fi­nan­cial re­ports, whether au­dit­ed or oth­er­wise, is an un­com­pro­mis­ing de­mand go­ing for­ward."

The prime min­is­ter said the lev­el of in­ef­fi­cien­cy of state en­ter­pris­es had man­i­fest­ed it­self in dif­fer­ent ways.

"Most of the com­mer­cial­ly-ori­ent­ed state-owned en­ter­pris­es have ac­cu­mu­lat­ed sig­nif­i­cant loss­es, re­quir­ing large trans­fers of cash sup­port from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, state-owned en­ter­pris­es have con­tract­ed siz­able debts, which they have not been able to ser­vice, leav­ing the bur­den as per­ma­nent li­a­bil­i­ties to the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

"In­stances of weak project plan­ning, ques­tion­able pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures and poor fi­nan­cial man­age­ment prac­tices are all too preva­lent in the sec­tor " he said.

Dr Row­ley added that ex­tract­ing the best per­for­mance from state en­ter­pris­es re­quired the align­ment of all the play­ers in­volved in the cor­po­rate gov­er­nance process.

He said: "The ex­perts will tell you that n the state en­ter­prise sec­tor good gov­er­nance starts with a clear de­f­i­n­i­tion of the re­spec­tive roles of the ma­jor play­ers: the min­is­ter (and by ex­ten­sion, his min­istry); the board of the en­ter­prise and the man­age­ment of the busi­ness."