State Institutions should send significant portion of their earnings to State Treasury: COPE

COPE Chairman Charitha Herath said today that state institutions should be prepared to send a significant portion of their earnings to the State Treasury.

It was revealed that State Timber Corporation had only transferred Rs. 100 million out of the total profit of Rs. 1.4 billion it had earned in 2021 to the Teasury.

The Chairman made these remarks when the State Timber Corporation was summoned before the Committee on Public Enterorises (COPE) recently to examine the Auditor General's Reports for 2019 and 2020 and to evaluate their performance.

The COPE Committee noted that the Forest Department had granted approval to the State Timber Corporation on June 30, 2020 for uprooting 28,958 pine trees from the Hyndford Estate in Weligampola, Nawalapitiya in the Kandy district, but the trees had not yet been removed. 

Member of the Committee  Mahindananda Aluthgamage, Member of Parliament stated that the State Timber Corporation could earn a huge profit if it could efficiently remove and export the timber recommended by the Forest Department for felling. (Yohan Perera and Ajith Siriwardana)