Owing to inefficiencies and mismanagement, the deficient State-Owned Enterprises incurred overall losses of around Rs500 billion to the national exchequer during last year (2022), Caretaker Federal Minister for Finance, Revenue, Economic Affairs, Dr Shamshad Akhtar said on Thursday.
Addressing a press conference, the minister said there were also profit-making enterprises, which earned an aggregate profit of Rs330 billion out of which Rs185 billion was made by oil and gas companies. In past, the minister said, the governments had established a range of SOEs with good objectives and these promoted economic development besides providing essential public services.
She said, these enterprises spanned over energy, telecommunications, transportation, trade, marketing and financial sector. However, she added, these entities suffered due to lack of autonomy, external interference, weak management, limited accountability, inappropriate boards, which she said resulted in financial losses and decline in quality of services. “There has been massive drain in public resources.”
However, the minister added, when privatized, the banking industry was one of the biggest success stories in Pakistan which transformed from loss-making to profitable. Shamshad Akhtar said the overall performance of SOEs was not very healthy what she called “contrary to the expectations” adding that some of these were marred by inefficiencies and mismanagement.
Elaborating upon the SOEs, she said that there were both non-commercial as well as commercial organizations included in it. She said 85 commercial SOEs could pay dividends and some of them could be profitable and some were already earning profits. Out of these, she said 20 enterprises were in power sector, 17 in infrastructure and 14 in mineral, manufacturing and mining. She also shared list of top ten profit-earning and loss-making organizations of fiscal year 2020.
