MARDAN, June 30: NWFP Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah on Saturday termed the nationalization policy the root-cause of economic stagnation and deterioration of industries in the country.

“In fact, the private sector has an edge over the public sector, in both efficiency and dynamism, and enjoy much more opportunities to open new vistas of development,” he said here speaking at the opening of a new branch of PICIC Commercial Bank here.

Mr Shah commented that the nationalization had led to the evil culture of grabbing public money in the shape of bank loans, which, he said, forced the industrial units to suspend operations on the plea of deficit and write off huge loans.

This situation, he said, adversely affected the NWFP where various industrial estates had been established, and investors and entrepreneurs were deceived in the name of incentives. Thus, majority of the industrial units closed rendering thousands of workers jobless, he added.

The Gadoon Amazai Industrial Estate, he said, remained the worst example of this crisis as the situation had forced the owners to shift their machinery to other places or left it to rust.

Similarly, the governor said, huge loans in the past had been received on exorbitant rates from the foreign financial institutions and wasted. If these had been used in the right direction, the situation would have been much different from the prevailing one, he added.

He said:”In the NWFP, we have already chalked out concrete policies to encourage entrepreneurs which could also benefit the financial institutions.”

He appreciated the PICIC to establish a network of its branches in the Frontier province. The step has been taken at the time when two major projects — the Pehur High-Level Canal and Swat River System — had matured and become a great source of attraction for the investors.