According to newspaper reports, Ijaz A Mumtaz, the president of the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI),has stressed the need for restructuring the public sector enterprises which are causing heavy losses to the national exchequer. He says that the government’s recovery planfor the public sector organisations is on the way as the Pakistan Railways and the Pakistan International Airlines will be overhauled, the government should also pay attention to other enterprises which are going into losses. According to him, the public sector organisationsare incurring a massive loss of Rs 600 billion to the national exchequer annually.
As a matter of fact, the organisations are the national assets and the government should take urgent steps to turn them into profitable entities. The idea of regulating big organisations was adopted from communism, but this experiment has failed all over the world. The government should devise a plan to revive the public entities or these should be privatised. In developed countries such as the United States, Britain and Japan, there is little room for the public sector organisationsand the private sector is the most important instrument of the socio-economic development.There is continued growth of privately-run corporations in the modern economies. Mumtaz says that the public sector enterprises cannot be ignored in view of the fact that they remain the most employment-intensive and capital-intensive organisations and suggested that a committee should be formed, consisting of experts from the public and private sectors, to revisit a strategy and adopt methods which provide a new impetus to them. He says that the committee should go ahead with broader political philosophy and vision to revisit how the public sector enterprises are required to play their role in the new competitive environment.
The public sector enterprises should continue to remain the backbone of the economy and their revival is critical to maintain economic affairs. The public sector organisations are though employment-intensive, but these hardly maintain profitability after a specific period of time as monotony and red-tap begin to dominate its affairs. The officials in the public sector organisations often skip accountability process again due to official rigmarole. The large scale public sector organisations such as Pakistan Steel Mills, PIA, Railway and Oil and Gas Development Corporation have become white elephants which needed to be privatised or revived. The public sector organisations should not be burden but an asset and their revival is a must for the development of the country.
