The Ministry of Finance has announced that it is seeking a consultant to strengthen and develop state-owned enterprises (SOE)s.

Interested parties have been invited to submit expressions of interest by 1:30 p.m. on 11 December.

Proposals will be evaluated in two stages, the ministry said. The first phase will constitute a technical evaluation of the documents submitted as the Terms of Reference (TOR). Submissions which score 80 percent or higher will move on to the second phase where the lowest bid will be selected as the consultant.

This comes at a time when President Mohamed Muizzu has already committed to consolidating, or eliminating, underperforming SOEs .

There are currently over 30 government-owned companies which employ approximately 33,000. Many of the SOEs are loss-making companies.