Dr. Noor Fatima (Economist): The concept of Privatization, which was coined in 80s, says that because state cannot provide all the goods and services to the people, then private sector has to play its role in this regard.

The state has to maintain minimum organizations in order to control its current expenditures of day-to-day business. One way to do this is by privatizing those sick organizations which are not earning profit instead government is paying to finance its leakages. It is very difficult for any state to bear the burden of such organizations for one or two years but we are bearing this for decades. If government does not have a cushion available for that, then the government will go for a loan. So, it is better to privatize those organizations which are going in deficit. When government is operating an organization, the workers will not understand the importance of the money being spent on the organization. We are paying maximum to achieve minimum services in government setup but in the private sector, the model of doing business is different where each unit of money matters.

The immediate benefit of privatizing could be the inflow of foreign exchange if we have foreign investors. It will shed the load of employees and government will be able to invest in other areas for development instead of filling the leakages of organizations which are going in loss.

There are many ways for privatizing an institution for government, one is that it completely privatizes the institution and the second way is to keep holding some of its shares and give rest to private sector. Keeping in view our social and economic conditions, Pakistan government should keep some of the ownership of the organizations while privatizing them. But fairly and economically speaking, fundamentally it should go all to the private sector.