Need to work on regional trade: Mian Mansha

LAHORE: Noted businessman Mian Mansha has said that we have to make peace with neighbours and work on regional trade.

Speaking at a discussion at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry during his visit, here Wednesday, he said peace eventually prevailed after Europe and world wars. He said he was aware that talks were underway with India.

Mian Mansha said its high we followed one point economic agenda. He said we should do away with the corruption mantra to save the country. He said the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) should be shut down.

He said humiliation of people should end. He said if the economy was not put on the right track, God forbid there might be another Bangladesh.

Mr Mansha said there is an urgent need to get rid of public sector enterprises. He expressed surprise that despite the huge success of the past privatisations, each government hesitates to go for further privatisation as all political forces are not on the same page. The political parties favour privatisation when in power and oppose tooth and nail when in opposition. He said during the rapid privatisation of the early 90s the state provided golden handshake to over 51,000 employees working in public enterprises that were privatised. He said MCB pruned its workforce of 15,000 employees to 6,000. The World Bank, he added, provided soft loans for this purpose. All employees were paid the cumulative salary for the entire remaining period (before retirement) of their service. No one complained. Today, he revealed the bank’s workforce is 22,000. The only strike that was witnessed when 51,000 employees were given a golden handshake was from some SBP employees.

There is no logic in operating the National Bank of Pakistan as a public sector entity. The plea that the bank is making profit is skewed. This bank is double in size than UBL and MCB, but is making much less profit than the smaller banks despite having the monopoly of getting all state deposits. The opportunity lost runs into billions of rupees annually. The government needs that revenue badly.

He said privatization works wonders for economy. He cited the example of the telecom sector where getting a phone connection was an uphill task. He said after privatisation the number of phone devices (landline and mobile) is almost equivalent to the number of people living in the country. Moreover, the telecom charges in Pakistan are one of the lowest in the world (due to stiff competition). In the same way when all cement units were privatised 30 years back the total cement production capacity was only eight million ton. Now it is 60 million ton.

The other businessmen at the discussion said politicians must realign their priorities and agree to reduce the size of government to move out of constant default threats. During the discussion it was revealed that the current size (strength employees) of the government is even higher than the size of the government when Bangladesh was part of Pakistan. All the businessmen agreed that the task to revamp is not possible through individual efforts and there is a need for all political forces to work together and the blame game should be stopped.

Each government, including the incumbent regime, has done both good and bad things. Now is the time to work in cohesion so that the past mistakes could be avoided.

“Confrontation is leading us nowhere and might cause irreparable loss to the federation.” It was revealed that the size of the Bangladeshi government is very small. Even the size of its army is 112,000. Bangladesh, which is a truncated part of Pakistan, has been ruled by two women in most of its history. They are bitter rivals, but any document or policy signed by one is owned by the other when she assumes power.

Businessmen agreed that there are numerous issues that could be solved through dialogue. There was a consensus that the water shortage is not as acute as is being portrayed. We are cultivating wrong crops that consume more water unlike cotton and other crops. We are also wasting our Railways infrastructure by operating public sector trains. The global model is that the state owns and maintains the railway track and the trains both goods and passengers are outsourced to the private sector. This model could bring down the transportation cost appreciably and lower the costs of both exporters and importers.

Our airports eat up national resources because of high cost of maintenance and lower operations. Airports the world over have successfully been privatised that include Delhi, Manila, and Heathrow. Moreover, we allow foreign airlines to land at night in our airports to provide advantage to PIA which incidentally is dysfunctional. We should allow foreign airlines to land at daytime so that businessmen visiting our country are facilitated. The unnecessary hassle of checking the foreigners passing through cantonments on the plea that they cannot enter the cantonment area (there is no other route) deters prospective buyers of our products.