ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) on Monday urged the government to privatize all the loss making public sector enterprises (PSEs) to save the national economy from further troubles as well as improving their working efficiencies and turning them into profit oriented entities.
ICCI President Ahmed Hassan Moughal, Senior Vice President Rafat Farid and Vice President Iftikhar Anwar Sethi, in a joint statement here, said the PSEs, including Pakistan Steel Mills, Pakistan International Airlines Pakistan Railways and others, were becoming a big burden on the national exchequer as the government was spending billions of rupees to keep them running.
Instead of spending the huge amount on bailing out PSEs, the government could achieve far better results by spending it on health, education and social sector development, they added.
They cited an assessment of International Monetary Fund, according to which the the combined accumulated losses of PSEs had exceeded Rs1.2 trillion that was 4 percent of gross domestic product.
Privatization of the enterprises would improve their performance and save billions of rupees being spent on them, they added.
The ICCI leaders claimed that the loss making institutions had borrowed 36 percent more from the banks during the outgoing fiscal year as compared to the previous year. As per State Bank of Pakistan's latest report, the banks had provided more than Rs329 billion to those institutions during 2018-19, they added.
They said the privatization of banks and the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL) had shown their improved performance.
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