Interim Finance Minister Shamshad Akhtar said that the caretaker government is working to bring a policy that will bettter evaluate the performance of state owned enterprises. However, she also revealed that SOEs were accruing losses of Rs500 billion.

Speaking to reporters at a press conference in Islamabad, Akhtar said that some SOEs were making profits as well but the profits mostly come from oil companies.

She said that SOEs had been marred by mismanagement and inefficiency especially due to wrong people being appointed in Pakistan and the government wanted to make sure the companies were run in a better way.

However, she clarified that once the companies got their own independent boards, th government’s job would be done and no further interference would be made.

She said that board members should be independent but have security of tenure for companies to run properly. She also added that the office of the person chairing the board should be separate from the chief executive officer for a comapny to run properly.

Akhtar said that the government wanted to take SOEs out of ministry controls to make them function more smoothly. She added that the government would hold on to ‘strategic’ SOEs but phase out the other ones gradually.

She said that public service obligations need to be measured more carefully because the government had limits placed on it by the IMF.