Daily Times

Here we go again. It turns out that the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) has finally constituted a four-member team to conduct a much awaited forensic audit of major loss-making State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) on the directives of the finance ministry which, in turn, was acting under the orders of the prime minister. The audit is urgently required because, for one thing, it hasn’t been conducted in years and, for another, it would be fitting to know how deep under water the worst of the SOEs currently stand. But it’s not like anybody is going to be really surprised by any of the findings. For everybody knows very well just how much of a burden these enterprises are on the national kitty and what must be done about them.

The idea, then, seems a necessary, routine exercise ahead of a major privatisation drive. That, at least, is how it seems even though the PTI government has been all over the place about how exactly to handle these loss-making entities. The first idea, back when Asad Umar was the finance minister, was to create a holding company which would somehow create a pool from which all the restructuring would be financed, etc. Little surprise, really, that nothing eventually became of that particular idea. But the main narrative shifted right back to privatisation when Hafeez Sheikh took over the finance ministry. He was, after all, minister of privatisation in the Musharraf setup long before he became finance minister in the PPP government (which was before he became special advisor on finance in the PTI government, of course). Perhaps that led the prime minister to believe that he might know what he’s doing when it comes to ‘selling them off’ even though Imran Khan was no fan of the Musharraf government nor did Sheikh accomplish much to write home about; in that or any other stint in government.

Still, the audit is the right way to proceed. If only the finance ministry hadn’t dragged its feet about the matter all this time, even after the prime minister’s direct orders, the government would have already known about the real state of affairs. Interestingly the next step is where some previous administrations have often called the whole thing off. Thing about privatisation is that you have to polish whatever you want to sell, otherwise you just won’t find the right price on the market. And that’s what nobody has yet been able to do. Hopefully the process won’t stop after an audit this time. *