One of the major economic woes of the country is devouring of substantial amount of revenue by huge losses making state enterprises. Either restructuring or outright sale of these entities has always proved to be hard nut to break for political reasons, procedural delays and shy attitude of private sector. A review meeting of Privitisation Commission was held to apprise Federal Minister for Privitisation of the progress so far made on the ongoing transaction process of few public sector entities. The enterprises which have been priortised for this purpose do not fall within the category of taking heavy toll on the national exchequer. The entities include SME Bank, Services International Hotel, National Power Park Company, Services International Hotel, Jinnah Convention Center and 28 high value properties. Matters relation to the restructuring of closed Pakistan Steel Mill also came up for deliberation in the review meeting. Hemorrhaging public sector enterprises eat up a great chunk of national revenues every year and their sale value is also fast depreciating. But offloading the financial burden of losses incurring state entities has not been seriously taken by successive governments. In the present government also, the fate of 56 such entities has not been decided in several meetings that had been held by the Privitisation Commission for this purpose. Irked by the snail pace of privitisation process, Prime Minister Imran Khan had chaired a meeting of concerned ministries few months ago and he had directed for completing on fast track the privitisation procedures, particularly of bleeding state corporations, within the stipulated time by maintaining close inter-ministerial coordination. The Council of Common Interest had approved 62 public sector entities for privitisation in its meeting of October 2018. But on the contrary, Privitisation Commission opted for a skewed policy and picked 11 profit making enterprises for disinvestment; put the privitisation of 24 non-profit state entities on the back burner; and dropped 29 bleeding enterprises from the privitisation list. The disinvestment of profit earning state enterprises provides easy money that may or may not help in small reduction in fiscal deficit. The closed and running into huge losses enterprises push up budget deficit in a big way which may reach to over 9 percent of the GDP during current fiscal year. The annual losses of inefficient public sector enterprises stand at Rs. 400 billion and cumulative losses have reached to Rs.1.8 trillion. Trade bodies have voiced grave concern over the wastage of taxpayers’ money on these corporations. The governments of other PPP and PML-N had adopted divergent policies on the losses incurring state entities. The leadership of PPP used these organisations as political support base and recruited crowds of party workers in them in addition to placing their cronies in the top management cadres, allowing them hefty salaries and perks at the cost of national kitty.
