Covid-19

‘Pakistan has performed better than many other developed countries’

By Our correspondent

KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan’s Deputy Governor, Dr Murtaza Syed, has said Pakistan has performed better than many other developed countries in times of crisis (Covid-19).

The future looks even better because of the institutional reforms that the federal government has implemented, he said while delivering his speech on the “Post Pandemic Economy of Pakistan” at the Karachi Literature Festival on Sunday. He said that this government, unlike the preceding ones, has not shied away from making “difficult” decisions such as increasing power tariff, adding the silver linings in this crisis were visible in the form of increased digitisation and introduction of e-payment gateways to include the masses in the formal financial system. Speaking next, Dr Ishrat Hussain, who is the adviser to the Prime Minister on Institutional Reforms and Austerity, said that in a bid to lessen the loss to the national exchequer, they had decided to keep 342 out of the 440 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) while the rest will either be privatised or liquidated or transferred to the provincial governments.

Dr Ishrat said a new law was also being brought in parliament to amend the Constitution to minimise the interference of the government in the affairs of SOEs, which historically has made things worse for these organisations, like in the case of Pakistan International Airlines, which currently has a negative net worth. Chief Executive Officer and Bank of Punjab President Zafar Masood said that the Covid-19 had also improved the human resource capital of the country, as many expatriates from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region had returned to the country. He said that quality HR had become available in this situation and they must be taken care of in a better way. Lauding the efforts taken by the government regarding institutional reforms, Zafar Masood said independence is necessary for the regulators as well as SOEs as it was the only way out of the crisis. He said there was no shortcut to reforming things but to take the bull by its horns. He said he believed that the restructuring of the Federal Board of Revenue was inevitable and indirect tax collections methods needed to be implemented. Khalilullah Shaikh, the PIA chief financial officer, said that one of the biggest problems the SOEs faced was a bad governance system, which made the processes lengthy and inefficient. He said that the government should reduce the bureaucratic interference in the running of its enterprises. The talk was moderated by Samiullah Siddiqui, the Oxford University Press’s finance director.