- And what then?
Once again PIA has started appearing in the news cycle. Only this time it is the honourable Supreme Court that is trying to do something about its liabilities, which have climbed to Rs406b against assets worth Rs111b. Sure, CJ Nisar’s orders will get the auditor general to complete the audit within 10 weeks. But there was some sense in former aviation advisor Mehtab Abbasi’s suggestion about engaging a professional forensic auditor with understanding of, and experience in, sick airlines, even though it did not find much traction with the bench.
Anyhow once the audit is complete it will give, finally, a quantifiable magnitude of leakages caused by decades of political staffing, corruption, etc. But what then? Even Wharton graduates in the just-finished PML-N setup failed to understand, surprisingly, the futility of attempting to privatise a state enterprise as huge and as run down as our national carrier. For one thing, putting a price tag on it in its present condition will practically amount to throwing out the family silver; that, too, after pumping billions into it for decades. For another, selling it out after turning it around might no longer be a profitable proposition, since an expensive make-up job will only deliver profits to a buyer that will still pay bottom dollar for it, considering its reputation.
Long forgotten in this debate is the central fact that the twin purpose of public sector enterprises (PSEs) was service delivery and revenue generation. To make matters worse, practically all hemorrhaging Pakistani PSEs have been deliberately run down by successive democratic governments. The only way to really settle this business, as the CJ will no doubt understand after the audit, is to run the PSEs like modern businesses. That, of course, will require a fight, quite across the board, against our deep rooted culture of corruption first. The CJ has his work cut out for him.
