This is apropos a Business Recorder op-ed "PTI's 'anti-worker' policies" carried by the newspaper yesterday. The writer, Rashed Rahman, appears to have carried out an excellent forensic audit of the country's mega Public-Sector Enterprise (PSE) Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM). He has plausibly argued, among other things, that "Ironically, it was the PPP government of 2008-13 under former president Asif Zardari that oversaw mismanagement in PSM to the extent that before they left office, the already inadequate production capacity of PSM was reduced to 40 percent. The remaining funereal rites of PSM were enacted by the following Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) government of Nawaz Sharif by cutting its production to 20 percent, then six percent, and then finally shutting it down in 2015."
One of the key reasons behind the fall of PSM was lack of modernization of the country's mega steel-making plant. The other such reason was the absence of a successful marketing strategy that could have helped the entity survive gracefully. It is needless to say that almost all Public-Sector Enterprises (PSEs) suffer from lack of professionalism and accountability. The situation underscored the need for formulating a new public-sector enterprises policy.
Wahid Husain (Islamabad)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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