Government unveils three-year plan to combat public sector corruption

• By Nishel Fernando

The government has formulated a three-year action plan to tackle deep-rooted corruption in the public sector based on IMF’s Governance Diagnostic Assessment (GDA) document.
Published on Thursday (29 Feb), this will focus on reforms in public procurement, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), tax incentives, and anti-money laundering and terrorist financing measures.  
These reforms are to be complemented by supportive measures targeted at the judiciary and legal amendments to provide more teeth to the Auditor General.

State Minister of Finance, Shehan Semasinghe taking to X, emphasised that the Action Plan demonstrates the government’s commitment to building a sustainable economy and good governance in the country.
As per the plan, senior public officials including President, Prime Minister, and Ministers will be required to submit their assets declarations (AD) within the second quarter of this year, which will be available for public access in June 2025.

In order to crackdown corruption in the tender process, the government is in the process of enacting a Public Procurement legislation in accordance with international good practices by December this year.  The exercise is spearheaded by the National Procurement Commission (NPC), with technical support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). 

Moreover, the government has identified ten state agencies with lowest competitive tenders and high annual procurements to increase the proportion of competitive tendered procurement contracts. The progress reports on these ten entities will be published on a designated website from this December onwards.
Meanwhile, the draft Public Commercial Business (PCB) or SOE bill is expected to go before the Cabinet of Ministers within this month for approval. Under the proposed law, Singapore’s Temasek-style holding company is to be setup to manage the SOEs. 

In order to avert ad-hoc tax incentives and tax policies, the government is in the process  of drafting a National Tariff Policy (NTP) for outlining  the way forward on taxes including CID, SCL and other measures which are subject to ministerial authority. 

As the next step, plans are underway to review provisions enabling unfettered ministerial authority with a view to introducing checks and balances, and to strike a balance between appropriate consultation, prevention of market manipulation, with greater focus on revenue protection and reducing corruption vulnerabilities. 
The action plan is scheduled to be updated next February on the basis of responsible government agencies, coordinated by the President’s Office.