- Not quite a no-brainer
If it were really as simple as mobilising the privatisation committee, passing a motion through the House and putting a price tag on it, PIA – and other loss making PSEs – would have fetched top dollar a long time ago. Yet here we are again, with yet another government making yet another attempt to sell off PIA, PSM, etc. As it goes through the motions, though, it will face the same options everybody else has every time.
As things stand the government, once it gets the go-ahead, can do one of two things. It can either push through the sale as it is, with PIA hemorrhaging untold billions every year, and get a pretty bad deal – literally throwing out the family silver. Or it can put some shine on it – throw out political appointees, hire professionals, etc – and get what the market calls a not-so-ugly deal. And once it realises that, if it is to be sold, the latter is the far better approach, it will also soon understand that if problems of corruption, political appointments and quality are taken care of, the need for the sale itself is reduced.
But by this time, usually, the electoral cycle is near its end and election compulsions push the issue on the backburner. This time, though, PML-N has taken the initiative right at the death of the cycle. And the usual criticism from PPP is unlikely to carry much weight, since their government was just as helpless in dealing with the matter. Considering that PSEs combined cost the government something like Rs700-800 billion every year – when they should, by definition, make profits – and nobody has been able to do much about it, perhaps it is time that we should hand our assets over to the cut-throat efficiency of the market as well. Our own small aviation sector, at least, has benefitted from private market regulations. And, if nothing else, it will at least reduce the PSE losses a little.
