24 SOEs handed over for privatisation, says finance minister; costing govt ‘nearly Rs1tr every year’

Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on Wednesday said that the government has handed over 24 State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) to the Privatisation Commission, stressing that the SOEs were causing a loss of “close to a Rs1 trillion every single year”.

He made the remarks while addressing an event in Islamabad today.

Referring to the recent privatisation of the Pakistan International Airlines Corporation Ltd (PIACL), the minister, in his address, said that the government has handed over 24 SOEs to the Privatisation Commission.

He added the government was “losing close to Rs1tr every year”, due to SOEs, terming it a “huge gap”.

Aurangzeb hoped that the amount could be put to a much better use going forward.

Last month, an Arif Habib group-led consortium won the auction for the airline with a bid of Rs135 billion.

He recalled that the government had to close down the Utility Stores Corporation, Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO), “not because 1,000-5,000 people were employed there, but because of the subsidies that the government was providing them”.

“More importantly, it was the corruption built into those subsidies that was the real cost to the exchequer,” the finance minister maintained.

More to follow.