Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: With the privatisation of Pakistan Security Printing Corporation (PSPC), the national security could be at stake as several sensitive tasks are on the list of responsibilities the organisation carries out.

The profit making Pakistan Security Printing Corporation has the mandate to print notes, prize bonds, board and universities’ degrees, cards for Pakistan Army and Navy, non-judicial papers and saving certificates.

The government is about to privatise the top national institution without taking into consideration the sensitiveness of the organisation and risks the state will face as a consequence.

According to the documents available with Daily Times, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had conducted several indoor meetings with regards to privatisation of PSPC. During the meetings, the special assistant to prime minister briefed about the legal options for State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to acquire PSPC. He said that in terms of the SBP Act, the apex bank can acquire PSPC provided some of its functions, not covered under SBP Act, were transferred to some other entity like Security Papers Limited (SPL), the associated concern of PSPC with 40 percent shareholding.

He further said that all provisions and functions in PSPC’s memorandum and article of associations, which are inconsistent with SBP Act, would have to be deleted and given to some other entity to enable SBP acquire PSPC. However, the finance minister did not agree on giving these functions to SPL and refused the proposal.

Documents further reveal that the special assistant to prime minister and the SBP team said that another option was to create a new company and transfer the PSPC functions to that new company, thus enabling SBP to acquire PSPC.

Various proposals for the proposed company also included that the Ministry of Finance would get a new company registered with SECP having mandate and functions of all security printing except currency notes, bank notes and prize bond, which were the mandates of SBP.

The new company would be 100 percent owned by the federal government and 176 acres of land costing billion of rupees would stand transferred to the new company to be registered in SECP.

A series of confidential meetings were held to give the authority to State Bank of Pakistan but surprisingly not even a single officer from PSPC was invited in these meetings.

The sources said that the annual income of PSPC was about Rs 650 million. It was the most sensitive department in which secrecy was maintained and its significance could be ascertained by the point that some 400 personnel of Pakistan Army were deputed on its security.

It is pertinent to mention that the government wanted to privatizse 69 state institutions on the direction of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Privatization Commission, but it has failed to do so.