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Roundup: Myanmar president-elect proposes reduced ministries in new gov't formation

Xinhua, March 18, 2016 Adjust font size:

Myanmar president-elect U Htin Kyaw submitted to the Union Parliament Thursday a proposal plan of forming the new government with a reduced number of ministries.

U Htin Kyaw's proposal plan was forwarded two days after he was elected by the parliament as the new president of Myanmar for the next five years.

U Htin Kyaw proposed the formation of 21 ministries in the new government, with 18 related ministers to be appointed.

The proposal is set to be put on debate in the parliament on Friday.

The listed ministries are those of foreign affairs, agriculture, livestock and irrigation, transport and communication, culture and religious affairs, resources and environmental conservation, electric power and energy, labor, immigration and population, planning and finance, industry, health, education, construction, social welfare, relief and resettlement, hotels and tourist; commerce, information, ethnic affairs, president's office, defense, home affairs and border affairs.

The proposal of the number of ministries to be formed and ministers to be named is apparently cut from 36 and 32 respectively in the outgoing U Thein Sein's government.

Some of the ministries in the outgoing government will be combined into one such as the merge of the ministry of agriculture and the ministry of livestock, the ministry of transport and the ministry of communication, the ministry of culture and the ministry of religious affairs, the ministry of electric power and the ministry of energy, the ministry of labor and the ministry of immigration, the ministry of planning and the ministry of finance, and seven ministries at the president's office.

One new ministry was added to the new government set-up which is the Ministry of Ethnic Affairs, indicating that the new government attaches great importance to ethnic affairs which are to be separately dealt with to boost national reconciliation.

The names of the proposed ministers are expected to be unveiled as a follow-up.

The reduction of the number of ministries by 15 has saved the monthly expense of over 100 million kyats ( 83,000 U.S. dollars) for a minister and a deputy minister for one ministry, it is roughly estimated.

According to the 2008 constitution, the three ministries of home affairs, border affairs and defense are to be run by the military in terms of naming related ministers.

On Thursday shortly after U Htin Kyaw submitted the new government formation proposal plan to the Union Parliament in terms of the number of ministries and ministers, the House of Representatives (Lower House) appointed Aung San Suu Kyi, an MP from the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) elected from Yangon region's Kawhmu constituency, as chairperson of the eight-member Joint Coordination Committee for Development of Parliamentary Affairs.

U Htin Kyaw of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won the presidential election on Tuesday with the highest number of votes of 360 against two other presidential candidates.

The new government is initially set to be sworn-in on March 30 at the parliament while the handover of the duties of the head of state is to be carried out at the Presidential Palace. Endit