Archery
One of the most talked about sporting moments of the Hog year was Karma Wangchuk, a caddie and a class-V drop-out, winning the India House Maruti Golf Tournament.
Karma Wangchuk, 18, triumphed over Major A K Gupta, a seasoned golfer, in the finals to take home a Maruti Zen Estilo.
Archery, the national sport, went off well as always. The 11th Yangphel open archery tournament saw nine new teams participating. Team Dungkar beat Katayana and Gyelyong Gaki in the finals played on September 2, while in the Druk Wangyal (traditional bow) tournament, Chukha Hydro Power Corporation defeated Bhutan Telecom in two straight games in the final on October 14.
The soccer national teams had little success outside the country, losing the AFC pre-qualifying tournaments in Dammam (U-16) and Qatar (U-19).
The only silverware Bhutan obtained was a runners-up in the Chief Minister’s Gold Cup finals played in Sikkim, India, in October. The national team lost the opportunity to participate in the FIFA qualifiers, after they disqualified Bhutan on the basis of not being able to play the home game in Bhutan because of a lack of proper facilities.
Transport United retained its title of the ‘A’ division league championship, rising over Drukpol in the final games of the tournament. Friends United were Veteran Champions beating Young Hearts by 3-1 in the shoot out after they drew 1-1 at full time.
Team Jachung took away the Coronation Cup winners in June beating Pazaabs in the finals of the basketball tournament, which saw twenty-four men teams participating.
The Bhutanese under-15 and -19 cricket teams grabbed some lime light in the hog year reaching the finals of both tournaments but losing out at the final hurdle. In the ACC U-19 Challenge Cup, Bhutan lost to Saudi Arabia by 59 runs in the finals at the Prem Oval stadium in Thailand and in the U-15 final Bhutan was thrashed by Qatar.
Governance
The year of the hog saw greater transparency in the appointment of senior positions in the bureaucracy, with 13 directors and three dzongdas (district governors) selected through open competition by the royal civil service commission.
The year also saw the appointment of the Vice Chancellor for the royal university of Bhutan, managing director for Bhutan broadcasting service corporation, director-general for department of energy and eight secretaries for the ministry of works and human settlement, agriculture, national land commission, labour and human resources, trade and industry, education and the planning commission.
On January 18, the planning commission was re-launched as the Gross National Happiness commission to streamline the philosophy of GNH into the country’s plans and policies. The commission will combine the functions of the planning commission and the committee of secretaries.
With the resignation of seven of the 10 ministers on August 6 to join politics, the Royal Advisory Council (RAC), almost 42 years after it was established in 1965 as a permanent body to advise the King and the government, was dissolved.
The National Assembly in its erstwhile form held its last session in June and, among other things, passed the Labour Act to introduce workers’ right and to enhance the legal standing of the workers.
The last session also passed the local government bill, which repeals the Dzongkhag Yargye Tshogchung (DYT) chatrim, 2002, the Gewog Yarye Tshogchung (GYT) chartrim, 2002 and the Bhutan Municipal Act, 1992.
In a significant move to strengthen local governance, 80 graduates joined the local government as gewog administrative officers (GAOs) to provide administrative and technical support services to the gups in May.
Meanwhile, construction related and embezzlement cases topped corruption cases in 2007. Out of the 18 cases the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) took up, five were forwarded to the Office of the Attorney general for prosecution, five to the respective organisations, six are being compiled for investigation reports and judgment was passed on two cases.
At the beginning of the year, ACC developed service standards and procedures and started working with agencies like the Land Record Commission and the Thimphu City Corporation to improve service delivery, transparency and accountability.
Tourism
Tourism industry, the country’s highest hard currency earner, continued to see dramatic growth in the number of tourists visiting the country.
In 2007, the industry earned US$ 30 million, of which it contributed US$ 10 million to the government coffers from 21,094 tourists who visited the country. In 2006, 17,365 tourists had visited the country.
But the industry failed to generate as much revenue in proportion to the number of tourists because of the sliding value of the dollar, which fell to an all time low of Nu 39 a USD towards the end of the year.
The industry is expected to see more focussed growth in the years to come, with the government creating an autonomous agency known as the National Tourism Board early this month.
2007, however, was not a good year for a few tourists who were robbed of their possessions by some locals in Paro. On the same night of October 2007, three men, a lone thief and a pair, burgled the tents of some American trekking tourists and robbed them of US$ 7,550 and US$ 1,025, at two separate instances, plus seven cameras, two binoculars, nine ATM cards and other accessories.
All the three robbers were caught. While two of the thieves await their verdicts, the lone robber was sentenced for seven years “for causing irreparable damage to the country’s image as one of the safest and an exclusive tourist destination”.
As in past years, the country’s lush valleys and majestic mountains failed to attract many trekkers in 2007, which saw only 903 of the total 21,094 tourists, who visited the country solely for trekking.
Lack of campsites, proper route maps listing distances, nature of routes and altitude were some of the reasons cited by tour operators for the dwindling trekkers in the country.
International SOS experts required the country’s tour operators to become its members to avail of its services. Most tour operators felt that these specialised services were meant for tourists, who could afford them or had high health insurance to return to their own countries for better treatment.
Meanwhile, the number of tour operators increased to 350 from 290 in 2007. Many hoteliers in Thimphu and other parts of the country began hunting for some of these new tour operators, who turned out to be shifty and failed to their dues when the season ended.
To counter such problems, the tourism department came up with a rule that tour operators produce a minimum security deposit of Nu 300,000. However, the rule was scrapped after much hue and cry from tour operators.
Tourism authority officials explained that the increase in the number of tourists in the country was because of the undercutting practice prevalent among tour operators and that there was no reason for the country to feel proud about the soaring numbers, because the revenue retained within the country was low. The only revenue that remained in the country was the royalty paid to the government.
Meanwhile, the Druk Taj hotel, which was supposed to open in mid-2007 fell behind schedule. The Oberoi group finalized plans to build hotels in Thimphu and Paro from 2009.
Health
It did not pain the government to see senior bureaucrats quit their jobs to join politics as much as it did when five senior doctors of the health ministry decided to do the same in the year of the water hog.
This would put further pressure on the ministry already struggling with a scarcity of professionals.
The government learnt that the doctors were distressed over not being paid in proportion to their skill, experience, years of hard work and sacrifices.
To dissuade the handful of doctors from quitting, an immediate, ad hoc decision of giving all the doctors 45 percent allowance came through. The government was ready to spend about Nu 800,000 a month as allowances to practicing doctors.
Despite that, three doctors left, of whom two have joined politics. Most doctors felt that the 45 percent allowance was long overdue and came a bit too late.
With the doctor-patient ratio at 1:10,000, many doctors, and not a few patients, suggested gradual privatisation of health care services. With each doctor able to spare only a minute a patient and the more seasoned ones inclined to service only the high and mighty, paying for services, some suggested, would bring about more equitable services. The fact, however, is that a large portion of Bhutanese people, living in rural areas, will not be able to afford to pay for health care.
The free health care system is also facing a shortage of nurses. The country required more than 900 nurses against the existing 580. While the internationally accepted standard of nurse-bed ratio was 1:5 or 1:7, Thimphu hospital’s nurse-bed ratio was 1:17. The country’s nurses still await their share of allowance.
All this is happening at a time when two new hospitals, in Thimphu and Mongar, are on the verge of completion. The Thimphu referral hospital, which has nine blocks including a service block, and the 150-bed Mongar regional referral hospital have both used up more than Nu 830 million of the about Nu 1,460 total budget approved by the government of India.
On October 3, the total number of HIV/AIDS infected people in the country increased to 125 people from 118 in just two months after the health ministry released its first updated report in August.
Today 101 people are living with HIV/AIDS in the country, 55 female and 46 male, including 10 children below the age of five years. So far, 24 people have died from the virus since the first case was detected in 1993.
2007 also recorded the first dengue-related death in the border town of Phuentsholing. A 34-year-old man died of dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) on October 5 at the Phuentsholing general hospital.
Although Bhutanese lifestyles were changing, their dietary habits remained same, besides suja, chilli, and doma, Bhutanese were consuming more oils and fats, large volumes of sugar and preserved junk food from tins and plastic containers. The most severe of the lifestyle problems was alcohol.
To give the tobacco ban legal backing, a legislation on tobacco control was prepared more than two years after the nationwide ban on the sale of tobacco products.
The 25th meeting of health ministers of the South-East Asian countries in Thimphu on August 31 decided that strengthening and developing community-based health workers and health volunteers to reach the unreached was of utmost importance.
Judiciary
2007 saw testing times for the Bhutanese judiciary.
The public and the media questioned its credibility and the professionalism of judges for not upholding “laws retroactively” in respect to a number of corruption cases.
It was observed that most courts, which dealt with corruption cases filed by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG), dismissed cases one after another by reasoning that it had happened before the enactment of Penal Code in 2004 and the Anti Corruption Act in 2006.
In one of the most highly criticised cases, the Wangduephodrang district court acquitted the 42-year-old gup of Nisho on the grounds that ACC and OAG charged him retroactively. Nisho Gup Phub Dorji had been charged with misusing public funds and official misconduct.
It was also noticed that the interpretation of laws varied from one court to another. For instance, some benches in Thimphu district court acquitted city corporation’s officials while others were jailed for three to six years. In some verdicts, the main accused were given less sentence terms while others, who were not involved in serious crimes, got the maximum sentence.
The illegal transfer of a 4.5 acre of government land in Phobjikha also went to appeal as the court acquitted all the accused on the grounds that the defendants had not gained any benefits from their conduct. What verdict the high court will pass is eagerly awaited by the Bhutanese intelligentsia.
In a similar land case in Gelephu, involving the illegal transaction of 45.50 acres of land belonging to people who absconded the country in the early 90s, four people, including a former drangpon, were sentenced to prison terms, ranging from five to nine and a half years on the retroactive application of the law.
The government also lost a case to the Tashi Group over the ownership of the existing taxi parking land in Thimphu.
The Phuentsholing dungkhag court acquitted all 72 RICBL employees, who were charged by the anti corruption commission for fabricating medical bills and forging documents.
Because of non-application of laws retroactively by the lower courts, the number of appeal cases to the High Court almost doubled from 173 cases in the previous year to 304 in 2007.
In one of the high profile cases, the Royal Advisory Council (RAC) and the High Court jointly sentenced the former managing director of the Army Welfare Project, Major (retd.) Pem Tshering to nine years in prison on March 24. The joint decision has also ordered Pem Tshering to repay Nu 96.51 million out of a total amount of about 131.51 million involved in the case.
Pem Tshering was found guilty of seven charges, ranging from misuse of project funds to forgery and criminal activities in connection with the illegal sale of AWP products.
The proprietor and chairman of Druk Penden Petroleum Corporation Ltd., Sonam Wangdi, was sentenced to four years in prison for forgery, fraud, deflection of kerosene across the border, criminal misappropriation and breach of trust in a verdict jointly passed by the High Court and RAC.
One verdict, which also caught the attention of the public was the seven-year sentence given to thieves, who stole money and equipment from some American tourists in Paro in October this year.
Many were of the opinion that the sentence was too harsh when compared with sentences given to those involved in peddling drugs that directly destroy the lives of many young people. The year also saw some developments within the judiciary.
On the command of His Majesty the King, dungkhag (sub-district) courts were established in the dungkhags of Samdrupcholing, Jomotshangkha, Nganglam, Lhamoizingkha, Thrimshing, Sakteng, Lingzhi, Weringla, Panbang, Dorokha, Sipsoo and Sambeykha, coinciding with the National Day celebrations on December 17.
The judiciary set up a Notary Public Office in Thimphu to specifically deal with and speed up registration of property transactions and issuance of certificates and notaries.
On July 28, the first National Judicial Council was established to streamline judicial reforms, strengthen the institution, and to ensure effective and efficient delivery by the justice system.
The chief justice of Bhutan, Lyonpo Sonam Tobgye, was conferred a Honorary Doctorate in Law by the National Legal Studies and Research University (NALSAR) in Hyderabad, India, during a NALSAR convocation ceremony on July 21.
Economy
With the economy clearly identified as one of Bhutan’s weaknesses, the year of the Fire Hog saw significant moves to ensure that Bhutan continues to enjoy socio-economic success and prosperity in a fast changing world, while safeguarding natural resources that belong to the Bhutanese people.
The first of these moves, inspired by royal vision, was the rationalization of prices of resources like sand and timber, which makes it much cheaper for Bhutanese to build homes, results in huge savings for the government and frees up capital for private entrepreneurs.
The second significant step was the creation of Druk Holding and Investments (DHI), based on the royal charter issued on November 11. DHI, a grouping of 14 companies in sectors such as hydropower, banking, minerals and natural resources, aims to achieve its objectives by promoting competitiveness in the Bhutanese economy through efficiency and excellence.
Meanwhile, at the start of the Fire Hog Year, the National Statistical Bureau had projected the Bhutanese economy to grow by 23.6 percent through 2007. The growth would mainly stem from increased power generation with the 1020 MW Tala Project coming fully on-stream.
These figures are likely to undergo a slight downward revision with power generation not hitting mean annual averages because of the late arrival and early recession of the monsoon.
Tala generated 3,918 million units through the year; its mean annual average generation is put at 4,865 million units. Even Chukha’s generation at 1,788 million units fell short of the yearly average by about 80 million units.
The monsoon, however, did impact on new industries. It delayed the commissioning of nine new factories in Pasakha, from ferro silicon to steel plants, after a bridge on the Indian highway, that forms an important lifeline to Phuentsholing, was washed away. The factories had been expected to consume 141 MW of power in 2007.
In 2006, tax-sheltered industries and sister concerns continued to figure prominently in Bhutan’s trade statistics, pushing exports to Nu 13.8 billion (excluding electricity export).
Software was Bhutan’s top export item at Nu 3.5 billion just after hydropower. The software export business is a sister concern of industries, which import raw material such as copper and palm oil from third countries, process it within the country and re-export it to India.
As of the third quarter of 2007, exports were touching Nu 12,661 million, but information on commodity break-up was not available.
As a single item, the import of diesel from India was on the top at Nu 1.5 billion in 2006. As of September 2007, the oil bill had crossed Nu 1.6 billion.
Gross international reserves increased by 33.3 percent (year on year) to USD 615.6 million as of August 2007, according to the Royal Monetary Authority, which was enough to finance 13.6 months of imports. But the Indian rupee component of the reserves continued to show a negative growth of 16.2 percent to INR 1,682.2 million.
By October, the central bank had addressed the Rupee scarcity and put a cap on INR exchange in cash at Rs 40,000. The central bank tightened its monetary policy to mop up the excess Ngultrum liquidity, which was leading to rapid credit growth and depleting the Rupee reserves by raising the Credit Reserve Ratio (CRR) from 13 percent to 15 percent and the face value of RMA bills from Nu 100 million to Nu one billion.
Inflation averaged 5.15 percent through the year with food prices up by almost 70 percent, particularly poultry and dairy products. With the off-on bans on import of poultry products from India to keep bird flu at bay, prices of eggs and chicken rose to record levels with an egg priced at Nu 10-15 a piece. Non-food items like clothes also became more expensive pushed up by rising fuel prices.
The stock market also saw limited trading with not many buyers for primary offers floated by several companies, most of which had to take time extensions to sell their offers.
Religion
Making his longest spiritual tour of Female Fire Hog Year, His Holiness the Je Khenpo visited central and eastern Bhutan on a 54-day programme in March and April last year.
His Holiness conducted a two-week Wang Lung Thri (blessing, oral transmission and admonition) ceremony in Zhemgang and presided over the Badza Guru Dungdrup in Gyalpoizhing, Mongar. He also presided over two Moenlam Chhenmos in Pemagatshel and Trashiyangtse.
His Holiness’s 54-day religious tour completed with the consecration of newly constructed eastern regional referral hospital complex in Mongar.
His Majesty the King attended the Zhabdrung Kuchoe (death anniversary of Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal) ceremony performed by His Holiness the Je Khenpo and the monks of Central Monk Body in Punakha Dzong on April 26.
His Holiness also conducted a 23-day admonition and Moenlam Chhenmo ceremonies in Tsirang in September.
The largest thongdroel in Bhutan, Kuenkhen Pema Karpo, was displayed at the courtyard of Tashichhodzong on November 6. The 90-foot long and 89-foot wide thongdroel was constructed according to the wishes of late lam Sonam Zangpo. The Thongroel will be kept in the Punakha Dzong.
On the command of His Holiness, all the rabdey dratshangs in the 20 dzongkhags performed Jana Chidoe Kurim for the successful enthronement of the Fifth King, the centenary celebrations, and the beginning of parliamentary democracy in 2008.
The Central Monk Body is investing Nu 52.3 million for the country’s biggest shopping mall in Phuentsholing. The construction, which began in December 2005, is expected to be completed by mid 2008. Source: Kuenselonline
