Daily Times

After banking and telecommunication sectors, now the government is mulling to privatise more national entities keeping in view their morbid financial status. It has been reported in a section of press that the government will complete transactions of three major public sector entities including Pakistan Steel Mill (PSM), Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDCL) by June this year. Different proposal

The affairs of the PSM and PIA have been in a mess for the last many years. Despite efforts to rs have been formulated for the privatisation of the said entities by the concerned authorities.evive these dead horses, odd circumstances led the situation from becoming bad to worse over the years. Large scale induction of staff on political basis and the poor performance of those sitting at the helm of affairs are cited as main reasons for the miserable plight of these organisations. There are a number of challenges for the government to successfully complete the privatisation process. These include employees’ concerns, opposition’s mistrust and transparency in deals. In the past, privatisation deals have not yielded the desired results. Mostly these deals were shoddy and aimed at obliging a few favourites or promoting cronyism. That is the reason the opposition has doubts about the process of privatisation of major national organisations.

The logic behind the government’s thrust to privatise state-owned and -run industries and institutions is to overcome the rampant corruption and inefficiency that has plagued these organisations for years. However, the solution to this problem is not the privatisation of all government-run industries but making the management and operation of these organisations more efficient by hiring competent professional managers and instituting policy changes.

Experts must be appointed to the Privatisation Commission to properly devise strategies for the efficiency of industries, particularly in the utilities sector. Privatisation of such companies in the past has failed because the private corporations tend to repurpose them to suit their own business interests, rather than the interests of the country. Privatisation also takes pension and other social security benefits from the employees. It is pity that when other states are focusing on industrial growth through the establishment of more and more industries, Pakistan is coping with the challenge of reviving its existing industrial units. Government functionaries talk about China and its progress in the industrial sector but fail to emulate their neighbour in these sectors. Government needs to overhaul the basic infrastructure of these organisations and purge them of all anomalies one by one. Even if government wants to privatise these national institutions, a proper mechanism needs to be followed to make the deals transparent. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government has the reputation of having business oriented leadership and now it is the responsibility of incumbent rulers that they should apply their financial acumen and make these organisations profitable entities. *