2 TIA OFFICIALS SENTENCED TO JAIL TERMS Kathmandu, 3 July: Purna Bahadur Basnet and Madhav Gautam of TIA were sentenced to six-month jails terms each by a special court Monday for taking a bribe from Denchan Sherpa to facilitate her travel to USA. All her travel documents were in order as the two officials harassed her. Charges were filed by CIAA. Nnnn PM SAYS GOVT. TO PROMOTE STATE MEDIA IN PRINCIPLE Kathmandu, 3 July: Prime Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai Monday assured that the government would make policy arrangement to ensure that state owned news media were empowered financially with advertisements from the government, The Riiing Nepal reports. At a meeting with the chiefs of the Gorkhapatra Corporation, Nepal Television, Radio Nepal and Rastriya Samachar Samiti (RSS) held at the Prime Minister’s office in Singha Durbar, the Prime Minister urged the government media to prioritise government policies and programmes while giving due space to the voices of the opposition. "I am clear that the government media outlets should get government advertisements in order to sustain them because for a country of diversity like ours, they are vital as they can play a coordinating role on behalf of the state," PM Dr Bhattarai said. The Prime Minister had called the officials of the government media houses to take stock of challenges they were facing. He said that the state media was needed as long as there were diversity and discrimination for the sake of positive discrimination. Some argue against state owned media in a democratic society, but I know that most countries, even the advanced one, in the world are keeping state media, the PM said. Saying that there was no alternative to loktantra, the Prime Minister urged the government media not to suppress the voices of the opposition. "The state should bear its responsibility to the public media houses while they should pay due attention to the good works of the government," said the PM, adding, "You should of course be critical, which is the lifeline of media, but balanced as well in such a way that the people are not disappointed and national interest is preserved." He suggested that the government media should not be totally dependent on government support as that undercuts their competitiveness and efficiency. The Prime Minister noted that the government had not paid due attention to the financial support for the Gorkhapatra Corporation and added that the government would take step to improve the poor financial status of the Radio Nepal. Referring to political situation of impasse, Prime Minister Dr Bhattarai said consensus among the political parties would be reached ultimately and the new constitution would be promulgated by the Constituent Assembly for the sake of democracy. Raj Kishor Yadav, Minister for Information and Communications, said that the government was firm to ensure press freedom. "However, what we expect is that the state media played the role of harbinger for change," Minister Yadav said. Lila Mani Paudel, Secretary at the office of the Prime Minister, said that the government would arrange advertisement for government media in the form of donation if they allotted some space for government advertisement. Government news agencies are the mouthpiece of the government and as such they should be critical of negative activities of the government and make people aware of the positive activities of the government," secretary Paudel said. Sitaram Agrahari, Acting General Manager of the Gorkhapatra Corporation and editor of the Gorkhapatra national daily, sister publication of The Rising Nepal, highlighted that the financial situation of the Corporation was poor at present although it had been sustaining itself without government support for the last forty years. "While the manpower and the salary is increasing, main source of our income, advertisement is decreasing because the government has not made any specific arrangement to provide government advertisement," AGM Agrahari said. Saying that the bureaucracy was unhelpful to Gorkhapatra, the GM thanked Prime Minister Dr Bhattarai for allocating some budget to the Gorkhapatra for publishing multi-lingual pages. PM Dr Bhattarai had arranged for budget to publish multi-lingual pages in the Gorkhapatra daily when he was Finance Minister some four years ago. He said that Gorkhapatra was facing great challenges because it had to make financial arrangement for providing retirement allowance to at least 80 employees within two years which might cost nearly 200 million rupees. On the occasion, Gambhir Kant Mainali of Nepal Television, Tapanath Sukla of Radio Nepal, Komal Baral of RSS and Manarishi Dhital of Press Council also presented issues and problems related to their media houses. Nnnn CDS OPERATIONAL FROM 16 JULY Kathmandu, 3 July: The much-hyped Central Depository System (CDS) and Clearing Company Ltd. Will come into operation from Shrawan 1 (July 16, 2012), CK Khanal writes in The Rising Nepal... The operation of the CDS will be possible after are enlistment of five issuer companies in the CDS Company. Earlier, the CDS had rendered the transaction permission to the two depository participants- Civil Capital Market and ACE Capital as per the license provided by the Security Board of Nepal (SEBON), the regulatory authority of the Nepalese capital market. Talking to The Rising Nepal, Subodh Sharma Sigdel, Chief Executive Officer at CDS and Clearing Company, said that it had planned to start its operation on July 16 amidst a special function. "We have requested Prime Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai to launch the new system," he said. According to Sharma, five issuer companies- Shikher Insurance, Everest Bank, Lumbini General Insurance, Ace Development Bank and Agriculture Development Bank have been enlisted in CDS, so far. Additional three companies are under documentation to enlist in the CDS, he informed. After the operation of the CDS, investors could open their d-mat account in the CDS Company to dematerialise their manual certificates of shares. Though we are officially coming into operation from the start of the new fiscal year, its test operation will begin from the last week of the current fiscal year, he said. For the operation of the CDS and Clearing Company Ltd., technicians from India are arriving by the last week of Shrawan, he said. The CDS for Nepal was developed in technical assistance of Center Depositary System Ltd. India - project consultant - and vendor CMC of Tata Consultancy. The implementation of CDS is supposed to be able to wipe out inconsistency and manipulation in stock trading making the Nepali secondary market more transparent. But the transaction cost in the automated system is expected to be higher in comparison to the existing manual system. nnnn