IT is difficult to take seriously the claim made by Privatisation Minister Daniyal Aziz that the government intends to sell off the national airline before its term ends.

The timeline is very tight, and the legislative changes required, as well as the restructuring of the airline prior to the sale of its ‘core business’, will be next to impossible to accomplish on such a hurried schedule.

One is hard-pressed to understand why the minister made the remarks in an interview to Reuters, a global news agency. If the government is serious about the proposal, it should consider the timeline first and make a solemn commitment that the matter is not going to be rushed through.

The minister said in the interview that the proposal has been developed in detail, and will now move to the cabinet committee on privatisation, as early as “maybe even next week”. The committee should carefully consider the timeline before it comes to any conclusion.

There is no doubt that PIA, as well as other state-owned enterprises such as the Pakistan Steel Mills, also mentioned by the minister, need dramatic change of some sort in order to stem their mounting losses, which are putting an unbearable burden on the national exchequer.

A way needs to be found to harness private-sector energies to revitalise these units, whether it is through outright privatisation or some other arrangement. But in the limited time left to this government, it will be far too difficult to effect such a change.

Since the government failed to take this step in the five years of its rule that began in 2013, and even bungled matters massively the one time it tried to move PIA towards privatisation, it might be a better idea to leave the task to the next government to handle.

Repeated attempts to move privatisation along that end up in failure do more damage than good. In the meantime, the accumulated losses to the national carrier now stand at Rs319bn; the amount is approaching levels almost equal to that of the circular debt in the power sector.

PSM is also asking for another Rs3bn to be able to run its payroll, something that has become almost routine.

Clearly, the situation is unsustainable in both enterprises, and the possibility of a disruptive credit event, especially in the case of PIA, is rising. Drastic steps are required, but haste should not be the force behind them.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2018