This is apropos a two-part article titled “The challenge of SOEs” carried by the newspaper yesterday and the day before yesterday. The writer, Captain Anwar Shah, deserves a lot of praise for doing what most of our policymakers have not been able to do so far: he has successfully carried out the correct diagnosis of ailing SOEs and presented a workable solution or prescription in this regard.

I fully endorse his entire argument that he has advanced through his article for this newspaper. It is true that SOEs in many developing countries are the sole providers of public services.

It is also true that many SOEs in developing countries are among the largest companies. That SOEs play a much larger role in the economies of developing countries than developed countries is a fact. Unfortunately, a very large number of them are afflicted by many ills such as inefficiency, complacency, nepotism and favoritism, unwarranted political interference and lack of competence and market orientation.

In my view, all of these economies, including Pakistan’s, must appoint independent or autonomous, competent management bodies to oversee the functioning of these SOEs. It is, however, quite unfortunate that the visiting International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission had not pressurized the government’s negotiating team to carry out reforms in SOEs without any further loss of time.

Mohsin Raza (Karachi)