A heated debate was expected on Thursday over the Local Government pay hike, but instead the real action took place with the preceding discussion on the Finance Committee’s report on Fiscal Incentives. There was uproar in the National Assembly (NA) when in response to a question from the Bumdeling-Jamkhar MP …

Lyonchhen Tshering Tobgay, around three weeks ago, wrote to the Royal Civil Service Commission (RCSC) to revisit and look at some grievances put forward to him in a petition by some members of the Supervisory and Support (S&S) civil servants. These S&S civil servants are unhappy with some civil service …

In what is aimed at being a revolutionary move towards better accountability from the bureaucracy, the Royal Civil Service Commission (RCSC) will be coming up with individual scores for 24,104 civil servants from the S 5 level and upwards till P 2 level by June end this year. The ranking …

A small issue on the language remains The House Committee’s of the National Assembly (NA) and National Council (NC) have managed to come up with an important recommendation to amend the Legislative Rules of Procedure (LRoP) which would avoid a vote on the BBIN and instead lead to its ‘dismissal’ …

The cabinet around a month ago decided that Bhutan will not join the World Trade Organization (WTO) for now. This is after a joint committee of officials from the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MoEA) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), set up around two years ago to study the matter …

A Civil service hike would only be considered once hydro revenue starts flowing in The government on 22nd February, 2017 announced the formation of the third Pay Commission to look into the pay, allowances and benefits of the local government (LG). The commission was formed based on the recommendations of …

In a sign that the Parliament is still trying to resolve the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal Motor vehicles agreement (BBIN) quandary the 4th May Joint Sitting for BBIN was postponed to 15th June. According to a Member of Parliament (MP) this postponement was decided on after a meeting between …

The Parliament’s ‘National Committee on Parliamentary Entitlements’ comprising of members from the ruling party, opposition party and National Council recently met to discuss and propose two entitlement issues that came before it. The first was on exemption of sales tax and customs duty or vehicle quota  for both the outgoing …

Now the challenge in Bhutan is to convince the joint committee and then the joint sitting to defer the BBIN agreement    A release from the Foreign Ministry on 27th April said that Bhutan has decided to give its consent for the activation of the BBIN Agreement among the three member …

The main underlying current against the BBIN agreement started from the exponential increase in the numbers of regional tourists coming into Bhutan with their own vehicles. The vehicles, most of which are from India cannot be directly stopped unless there are specific reasons like lack of immigration clearance or the …