| 12 January 2004 | Monday | 19 Ziqa'ad 1424 |
Resuming links
Rising onion prices
The idea of partially privatizing Pakistan Railways as part of an effort to make the organization financially strong comes across as a short-term solution to what is essentially a long-term problem. A study conducted by a consultant for the government has recommended that the government retain 20 per cent stake in the organization, float 50 per cent in the market and hand over 30 per cent to a strategic buyer.
This seems a rather easy way to dispose of a national asset after mismanaging it for several decades without taking into account the larger national interest. It is a fact that Pakistan Railways suffers from severe financial problems. Owing to poor performance in the past, the PR has an overdraft burden exceeding Rs20 billion with the government.
In the past few years, despite a new management being in place, the performance of the organization has been shoddy. In the calendar year 2003, while earnings from passenger traffic rose from Rs6.2 billion in the previous year to Rs6.9 billion, freight earnings dropped from Rs4.6 billion in 2002 to Rs4.1 billion in 2003.
What is significant is that the rise in passenger earnings came largely from increased fares while the drop in freight earnings resulted from a decrease in freight rates. In other words, the management has had little success in attracting more business, be it passenger or freight, in the past few years. Instead of concentrating on increasing the number of passengers or the volume of freight, the emphasis at the moment seems to be on higher revenue earnings. This is a short-sighted approach.
The management has resorted to novel methods in this regard. These include development of a golf course meant to be rented out, and commercialization of over 50 railway sites. Then there are gimmicks that include launching new train services without visibly improving the existing ones and promising new routes and faster trains, without actually delivering on any such promises.
Over the years, there has been little progress made in terms of improving service. The PR management has had little success in clearing up encroachments on railway lands and on the laying of double rail tracks on different sections of the tracks. Rail passengers continue to complain of shoddy treatment and bad quality of trains.
While the need to stay in the black is understandable, the fact is that the PR is a public utility and one that enjoys a monopoly of this mode of travel. As such, it is difficult to understand why train fares cannot be kept reasonably low and efforts made to attract more passengers and freight on the basis of all-round improvement in service and facilities. Fast and efficient bus services as well as cheap airfares have drawn a substantial number of train service users away for these other modes of transportation.
Similarly, road transport is preferred by the majority for transporting bulk cargo. It is this core business of the railways that the government needs to concentrate on improving. If some betterment is made in this, the future of Pakistan Railways will look more promising.
Resuming links
Talks are expected to start between India and Pakistan over resuming links that were broken prior to the punitive measures taken by the two countries against each other in 2001. The actions taken in 2001 have largely been reversed with decisions to re-establish road, rail and bus links. Now the people of Karachi and Sindh are looking with hope at the possibility of resuming those ties that were broken well before 2001.
These include a regular passenger shipping service between Mumbai and Karachi and the reopening of the Khokhrapar-Munabao border crossing, both of which were suspended in 1965 when hostilities broke out between the two countries. There are also expectations that the proposed round of talks next month will result in the opening of the Indian consulate in Karachi, which was abruptly shut down in 1992. All these steps were mentioned in the confidence-building measures proposed in November 2003.
Resumption of these links will go a long way in reducing the hardship suffered by many who have to travel to Islamabad for visas or cross the border through Wagah despite the fact that they live in Karachi and many of them may wish to travel to the southern parts of India.
It will also help to boost people-to-people contact between the two countries. This is an issue to which both the Indian and Pakistani leadership is firmly committed. Until 1999, India's strategy was to try and sort out the less contentious issues first, such as Siachen or the Wullar barrage, and then move on to the big issues, such as trade or Kashmir. Between 1999 and 2001, India revised this policy to meet Pakistan's concerns, taking trade and Kashmir first.
This time round, the two countries have made a radical strategic shift, which is to seek the ties that bind, such as trade, travel and exchange - which create the right atmosphere for more contentious issues to be resolved. Most promising of all, this strategy has yielded a basket of concrete measures that none of the previous negotiations produced, and has added a regional dimension that the previous agreements had lacked.
It is hoped that the will to continue with these steps remains and that the extent of people-to-people contact between the two countries acts as an impetus for the resumption of those ties that have remained severed for too long.
Rising onion prices
If it is not tomatoes then it is onions, and that seems to be the case with the violent fluctuations in prices of staple vegetables. Does it really have to be that bad? The reason often given for a sudden rise in prices of basic vegetables is usually a bad crop. The price of onions has reportedly soared from five to eight rupees a kilogramme until a week ago to Rs20-24 now, with the blame being put on a bad crop in Sindh which accounts for some 45 per cent of the country's onion output.
The point to note is that one does not just wake up one day to find that a certain crop has not had its expected yield. The agriculture department, by its own admission, knew that the last monsoon season's heavy rains had affected the onion crop, and yet the officials concerned chose not to plan ahead on how to meet the gap between demand and supply. The uncanny consolation now being offered is that the second onion crop will reach the market by mid-February and that is when onion prices will come down and stabilize.
This apathetic attitude on the part of the agriculture department is simply not acceptable. The sudden and manifold rise in the price of the staple produce is already causing hardship to people who can ill-afford to purchase onions at their current and still rising prices.
The agriculture minister should immediately take note of the situation and find ways and means to stabilize the produce's price at the earliest, even if that means having to import onions. It will also be worth investigating how much of the current price hike has to do with hoarding and black marketing of the produce by unscrupulous middlemen and profiteers, who are known to create artificial shortages of essential commodities for selfish gains.