Transferring the Sugar Advisory Board (SAB) from the Ministry of Industries (MoI) to some other ministry, as the prime minister has agreed to do, might make good headlines but it is not exactly the best way to address such issues. Khusro Bakhtiar, who was given the serious charge of minister for industries during the recent cabinet reshuffle, apparently refused to chair the board because of a conflict of interest since his family has stakes in the Rahim Yar Khan (RYK) Group that owns five sugar mills, which amounts to a 12.24 percent share in total national production capacity. The conflict of interest is clear enough and since Bakhtiar is the subject of a very important sugar investigation some would say that even giving him the portfolio of industries amounted to a similar conflict. The problem arises when people with stakes in different industries are given sensitive government positions which directly impact those very sectors and industries. And as the cases of Razzak Dawood, Nadeem Babar, Omar Ayub Khan and also Khusro Bakhtiar go to show, they were given charge of sectors in which they had direct or indirect personal business interests. If they really did merit positions in the cabinet, wouldn’t it have been wiser to give them portfolios that didn’t necessarily conflict with their own businesses? Initiatives like transferring SAB out of MOI are, in such circumstances, only cosmetic changes that will not address conflict of interest in government in any way. It might, at the end of the day, damage the prime minister’s own credibility more than anything else. When talk of the latest cabinet shakeup first hit the news it was hoped that the PM would give this issue the attention it deserves and make sure that cabinet members started with a clean slate at least as far as very clear conflict of interest was concerned. Yet things have evolved rather differently. This could, and most likely did, route adulterated information to the PM. The kind of effect such things can have on official policy hardly needs any explanation. Once again, it is for the head of government to sort out such things once and for all because it is in the best interest of his administration that his personal credibility is not hurt for no unavoidable reason. *