Education city

Subsidizing profits

June 28, 2012Government15 Comments

In their story about MPs calling for certain state-owned corporations to be privatized, Kuensel quoted me as saying that the government was giving too much subsidies to the corporations. "As if providing land was not enough, the government is even generous enough to provide them subsidy, which meant extra burden to the government", I supposedly said. The quote is correct. But the context is wrong. I didn't complain about subsidies that corporations receive. In fact, I believe that we must do a better job of ensuring that corporations that provide a public service - BBS, for example - have…

Not so fast

April 22, 2012Education20 Comments

What do you make of this? The cabinet has reportedly “further ratified” the Education City project bid, and awarded the bid to a consortium of bidders (infinity Infotech Parks Ltd., and Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Ltd.) It appears that a contract agreement will be signed this month following which work on a detailed project report will begin. Good? I don’t know. I still have serious misgivings about the size and feasibility of the project. True, education is a viable business, and we must harness its potential to service both local and foreign demand. But planting a bunch of…

May 13, 2010Government

Today, yet another concerned person asked me about the education city. And he too wanted to hear my views on the 1 billion dollar project.
Some of you may have seen my views in Tenzing Lamsang’s story. But, it appears that many others haven’t. So, with the permission of Business Bhutan, I’m reproducing their entire story….
Billion $ education city under scanner
US$ 500m foreign exchange a year and around 30 international universities on 1,000 acres: this is what the prime minister’s pet project, the planned education city, aims.
If MediaGlobal, a United Nations-based news agency, is to be believed, the ground breaking ceremony for the city is just a year away.
“While anchor universities should start operating initially, it is likely to be 10 years for the entire city to be in place gradually,” MediaGlobal quoted Kushal Sengupta of Infinity InfoTech Parks, the agency that is proposing to implement the project at a site yet to be identified.
But critics of the project say the manner in which the country’s biggest foreign investment plan is being pursued is not proper.
Opposition Leader Tshering Tobgay said that he is ‘very concerned’ about the project by its lack of transparency.