ISLAMABAD, July 28 (Alliance News): Finance Minister Miftah Ismail has said that the government is amending the laws to sell the shares of state-owned enterprises to friendly countries in order to estimate the financing gap of 4 billion dollars by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this fiscal year. Is.
The minister said this , while addressing a seminar organized regarding improving the efficiency of government institutions, the finance minister said that the restrictions on imports will be removed in one to two weeks, which will cause difficulties for the people.
All pre-arranged actions under the Staff Level Agreement with MF have been completed and there are no further hurdles to get the first tranche at the end of August.
Without naming the ‘Inter-Government Commercial Transactions Act, 2022’ passed yesterday, the finance minister said the law was necessary as the current privatization law does not allow such commercial transactions between governments.
An official statement after the Cabinet meeting said that the Cabinet approved the Inter-Government Commercial Transactions Act 2022 proposed by the Ministry of Law and Justice and referred it to the relevant Standing Committee of Parliament.
The Cabinet was told that the Act will provide confidence to foreign investors and increase foreign investment on an intergovernmental basis in development agreements.
It was informed in the meeting that for the first time practical steps are being taken to protect the intergovernmental agreements and make them transparent.
Miftah Ismail said that Pakistan is facing constant problems regarding government enterprises as some of them are suffering from mismanagement while some of them are important for service delivery but they are also not providing services and budget problems. are creating
Referring to his personal experience of working with the boards of PIA, Sui Southern Gas Company, OGDCL and power distribution companies, Miftah Ismail said that most of these institutions are staffed by professionals. But still they are not performing.
He said that the possible reason for this is that laws and government structures limit the efficiency of these institutions, so perhaps to improve the efficiency of such institutions, better laws and government structures or better ways to speed up their privatization. Required.
He said that NAB has been established for 20 years but there has been no reduction in the level of corruption or the perception of its presence, similarly the Public Procurement
Regulatory Authority (PPRA) and its rules have been in existence for more than 20 years. But it is not known whether the procurement costs have come down or things have improved as compared to before the establishment of this authority.
He said that the reason for this is that these laws are a cover and provide an excuse for some people not to work, so the shares of government enterprises and 2 LNG power projects owned by the federal government (Blocki and Haveli Bahadur Shah) For sale to a friendly country through the stock exchange, the rules relating to these entities will be suitably modified.
He said that even before the negotiations for this transaction started, some people started criticizing that we are only selling the shares included in the trade in the stock exchange and very few shares of each company will be sold, economic. The government can buy back these shares when conditions are favorable.
