KARACHI, Nov 12: Renowned economist Dr Qaiser Bengali has said that the privatisation programme must be buried for good and in certain cases, it should be reversed.
He was delivering his lecture at the Pakistan Peoples Party’s secretariat here on Sunday which was organised as part of the party’s lecture series to shed light on the country’s vital issues. Eminent trade union leader Habibuddin Junedi presided over the sitting.
Dr Bengali said that even in some European countries where not only the privatisation process had been honestly conducted and where the state had been very closely regulating the operations of the privatised units, the concerned governments were reversing their earlier decision to privatise the units which either proved counter productive or undermined public interest.
He said that Pakistan was moving fast towards a stage where only the rich would be able to afford essential public utilities like drinking water, electricity and gas. Basic rights, including personal security, education and health facilities, etc, were getting beyond the common man’s affordability.
“If that is the kind of society we are going to build, it is alright to carry on under the current policies imposed from abroad. And if not, we will have to take matters in our own hands to formulate such policies which could protect and benefit our people.”
According to him, a parliament elected in a free and fair election should debate the privatisation experience and lay down the policy guidelines identifying the areas where the private sector may be allowed to play a role and defining that how it should be regulated. These guidelines should be followed strictly and privatisation of any unit against the guidelines should be reversed.
The economist was of the view that the investments which did not materialise in the shape of new manufacturing units and higher production could not be called investment. The privatisation carried out so far was only the change of ownership of the existing units which had, with few exceptions, resulted in closures and de-industrialisation. If anything it could be called was the immoral stuffing of public resources in private pockets, and not investment by any stretch of imagination. He regretted that during the last decade or so, no new manufacturing unit had been set up in the country. Dr Bengali recalled that just five days before Ms. Benazir Bhutto took oath of office in 1988, Dr Mehbubul Haq of the then care-taker government had signed an agreement with the IMF that bound Pakistan to pursue a privatisation programme. Neither the caretakers nor the IMF had given any consideration to the fact that a new government had already been elected with a manifesto voted upon by the people and they were the ones with the right to make future policies, he observed.
While reopening negotiations with the IMF, Ms Bhutto proceeded with utmost care, selling only three per cent of the PIA shares through the open stock market. After her elected government was removed and Mian Nawaz Sharif was brought in, the new government put as many as 90 public sector units to the private sector in just one year under his privatisation policy.
Nawaz Sharif’s government had argued that these units were running in loss and had become a burden on the national exchequer. However, Dr Bengali said, these were profit-making units. The prices of these units, fixed by the Privatisation Commission were as low as a fraction of the price of the land that they were built on. This was proved when all, except a few, privatised units were closed down by their new owners who sold away the land.
The present military rulers argue that government should not be in the business of running industries. In line with this perception, they sold out the most critical and profit-making unit, the PTCL, to a foreign public sector company. “Now it is not our government, but a foreign firm which owns and controls our communication system.”
He said that 80 per cent of our banking and the entire oil & gas sector were being handed over to foreigners. These foreign firms would earn their profits in Pakistani currency but remit it abroad in dollars which would create a frightening trade deficit.
Dr Qaiser Bengali drew a clear line between ‘private profit’ and ‘social profit’, and said that while the private sector worked for making private profits for itself, the function of the state was to strive for making more and more social profit. Maintaining a decent minimum wage level, providing job opportunities, keeping utility rates at affordable levels, ensuring health and education for all, etc., were the duties of the state from which it could not move away, he stressed.
Habibuddin Junedi said that the damage done to the country by the imperialism was now very obvious even to those who had willingly become tools in foreign hands for their implementation.