Cabinet to conduct a careful review of state-owned enterprises

Islamabad:

The cabinet has ordered a careful review of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to be categorized as “essential” or “strategic” in a bid to stay in government.

Sources told The Express Tribune that the Cabinet Department had undertaken an exercise to categorize state-owned enterprises. In a recent meeting, the cabinet observed that the exercise required careful consideration and sound reasoning to categorize SOEs as “essential” or “strategic” and to decide which SOEs should remain with the government, privatized or liquidated.

Some members highlighted the need for further discussion and suggested a meeting chaired by the prime minister to finalize the issues.

The cabinet was briefed by the Cabinet Office on the “categorization of state enterprises as strategic/essential”.

According to the classification by category, the total number of state-owned enterprises was 84. The number of state-owned enterprises examined by the ministerial committee on state-owned enterprises was 61, of which 15 were categorized as core. SOEs categorized as strategic were five and SOEs identified for privatization were 18.

The cabinet directed all relevant ministries and departments to further rationalize the necessity and decide whether they should remain with the government or be privatized. The government has also been working on streamlining ministries and departments, which will result in vindication of state-owned enterprises. Under the plan, the government decided to liquidate some state-owned enterprises.

Earlier, the Cabinet had a presentation on the performance of state-owned enterprises, where it was informed that the Cabinet Committee on State-owned Enterprises had held several meetings to consider proposals by departments to retain their state-owned enterprises as “strategic”. or “substantial.”

Based on the progress so far, the following details have been submitted to the cabinet:

The total number of state-owned enterprises identified by the Finance Directorate was 84, of which 55 were examined by the ministerial committee on state-owned enterprises. The number of state-owned enterprises classified as core amounted to 13, while five were classified as strategic. About 15 state-owned enterprises were planned to be privatized, while 22 were under consideration by the ministerial committee on state-owned enterprises with instructions.

The cabinet was informed that a comprehensive program was being prepared and state-owned enterprises, duly reviewed by the cabinet committee, were in the works.

The government has started the effort to consolidate rights with the IT ministry. It has decided to close and privatize some institutions under the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications as part of the rights programme. The Institutional Reforms Commission ordered that the Telecom Foundation be closed and its subsidiaries privatized.

The National Information Technology Board (NITB) is set to undergo a massive restructuring in a bid to become a lean body that works with private service providers and adopts an outsourcing model.