Pasban Democratic Party (PDP) General Secretary Iqbal Hashmi here Friday expressed grave concern over unbridled privatization of the strategic national assets and asked the government to instead focus on the basis issues of economy and resolve them.
In a statement here, he said that selling off the precious national strategic assets is no solution to our economic crisis. He said that the failure of SOEs is their bad management. Government deputes incompetent officers on political basis to run these SOEs.
If these entities are run on professional basis by competent management there is no reason why these organizations could not be run profitably. Giving example, he said that when the KESC was in government control it would incur losses every year, but after the privatization the KE became a profitable entity. He said this is the difference of a incompetent political management and competent professional management.
He said the closure of the Pakistani Steel Mills is amongst the greatest conspiracies against Pakistan. He said PSM was running in profit when the government brought political people to run it and they deliberately failed the PSM as per the agenda of their foreign paymasters.
He said economic hit men of anti-Pakistan forces have been in action during tenures of all governments in Pakistan and their goal is to cause irreparable loss to Pakistan and its economy. He suggested making a board of competent and patriotic Pakistani economists to run the loss incurring SOEs and if they recommend that some SOE is beyond improvement it could be privatized in the larger national interests. He asked the government to focus on energy sector, as the energy sector is the driving force that runs the whole national economy.
