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Long-term industrial policy soon

RECORDER REPORT

KARACHI: The government is bringing out a long-term industrial policy soon to develop overdue industrial base, a senior official said on Friday.

Abu Shamim Arif, Secretary, Ministry of Industries and Production, while addressing a seminar here, said policy inconsistency had been a key hurdle in the industrial growth of the country. The new policy will address this backlog in an appropriate manner. He said various committees have been formed comprising private sector representing their respective sectors to furnish recommendations for the policy.

The seminar was organised by the Management Association of Pakistan (PAM) to discuss industrial development, investment promotion and privatization.

Privatisation Commission Chairman Altaf Saleem addressing the seminar, said that various state organization are being run under colossal loss and we were virtually sitting at time bomb if we would not proceed with our privatisation plans in a timely manner. Giving pitiable financial condition of Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) Altaf said that the organization had been suffering 40 percent line losses and total liabilities have gone as high as Rs 72 billion as against its assets of over Rs. 60 billion.

It need $ 750 million in coming 2 to 3 years to run it efficiently.

Railways, he said, was another such specimen. With a total liabilities of over Rs 99 billion, the department has 103,000 employees at its strength whereas the number of its pensioners had been 104,000. Privatisation was the only way out to address these problems he said.

He however, said almost all the ground work had been completed by the present administration with regard to privatisation. Regulatory work was another pre-condition of the privatisation, Altaf said, especially for the petroleum and gas sector.

The privatisation of the gas sector had been discussed for the last four years, he said, but no regulatory framework was drawn. The government has now established gas regulatory authority last month, he said.

Syed Babar Ali, member, Economic Advisory Board, in his address urged for educational revival.

Without better education standards we could not survive in the coming days, he said. He observed that the shortage of good managers had become a universal phenomenon. The multinationals are available with the plenty, of capital but are failing to find human resource to employ that capital.

Citing the case of India, he said by the year $ 2008, India would be exporting about 80 billion computer software in the world. It started developing human resource in the computer sector in 1950s and after 40 years it has begun realising the yield.

It produces 50,000 good engineers every years. On the other side, our output is abysmally low.

Nevertheless, he said, the education sector was among the top priority sectors of the government. Syed Babar Ali also chairs EAB's sub-committee on industrial development, investment promotion and privatisation.

Yusuf H Shirazi, an eminent industrialist and businessman, urged the need of protecting the middle class, which plays a vital role in building the country. He said our salvation lies in self-reliance.