Government should get rid of all loss-making public sector corporations, which every year swallow billions of rupees.
RAWALPINDI: Going by what the PML-N government has done so far, in its 120 days, on the economic front, one can’t really pin too much hope on it, as far as helping the poor is concerned. Everyone knows that as a nation, we are strapped for funds and many of our economic problems stem from this. Hence, it is all the more surprising to see that those who run the economy don’t really do anything to augment Pakistan’s revenue stream other than to borrow from banks, borrow from the IMF, or tax the poor (who are already overtaxed).
Does it require rocket science to know that to get out of such a tight situation one has to cut down all non-essential expenditures and losses, and explore ways and means to generate additional income? For starters, the government should sharply roll back the lavish and extravagant ways of its bureaucracy, ministers and legislators.
The government should get rid of all the loss-making public sector corporations, which every year swallow billions of rupees. The second thing that the government should do is to auction all tax-collecting agencies. It should do this initially for a period of three years, keeping the base or reserve collection amount at double the average for the last three years collected by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). The successful bidder may hire any FBR staff and the rest should be given a golden handshake.
Col (retd) Riaz Jafri
Published in The Express Tribune, October 6th, 2013.
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