Minister Fawad says govt to privatise non-profitable entities

ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Minister for Privatisation Fawad Hassan Fawad on Thursday said that the caretaker government was taking all important steps to privatise non-profitable entities of the country.

The people will hear good news about Roosevelt Hotel, he said while talking to a private television channel. “We will make Pakistan International Airlines a profitable institution after completing its privatisation process in phases,” he said.

Commenting on distribution companies (DISCOs), the minister said that the caretaker government was making all-out efforts to enhance the efficiency of all such units which were not producing results, the official news agency reported.

“The country cannot bear the economic burden of sick units anymore. There is a need to make hard decisions in the larger national interests,” Minister Fawad added.

In reply to a question about the delay in the privatisation process, Minister Fawad said the last regime of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) could not pay attention to the privatisation process and Pakistan had to face heavy losses due to weak policies of the past PTI regime.

A few days ago, Minister Fawad highlighted the flaws in the country’s taxation system by informing that around 93 percent of the collected tax revenue is either voluntary or withholding; whereas, only seven percent is actually collected by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).

He informed the audience that the current state of the public sector is unsustainable and contributes to the deterioration in the business environment in the country.

Minister Fawad said this while speaking at the 3rd ‘Pakistan Prosperity Forum’, organised by the Policy Research Institute of Market Economy (PRIME).

In three years from 2018-2021, the government spent Rs2.54 trillion in terms of subsidies, grants, and loans to keep commercial SOEs operational, he said.

He informed that the size of the government has increased by more than three times in the last couple of decades.

Minister Fawad said moreover FBR sends recovery notices to individuals worth billions of rupees while the actual collection is a mere few hundred million.

Since 2016, the tax burden on corporate taxpayers has increased by more than 40 percent on average, he said.

Such a burden has contributed to encouraging people to stay out of the tax system and corporatisation, he said.