By IRNA,
Islamabad : Pakistan government has decided to privatize 58 state owned companies to deal with the economic crisis.
Council of Common Interest (CCI) has approved privatization of 58 government organizations; this was stated by Federal Secretary Privatization, Shahab Khwaja.
President Asif Ali Zardari last month said that Pakistan had suffered a huge loss of over 35 billion dollars during the last eight years as a result of the fight against militancy in addition to the colossal and unquantifiable cost in terms of social and human losses which had almost crippled the nation’s economy.
Majority of Pakistanis believe that war on terror has practically been an American war in which the Pakistani government went beyond limits of subservience to the US.
There is a lot of pressure on the Pakistani government from the public to come out of the alliance with the US in war on terror.
President Asif Ali Zardari has said that the international community owes help to Pakistan in overcoming its current difficulties so that the country could play its role at international as well as regional levels effectively.
Pakistani former finance Shaukat Tarin earlier had spelled out the challenges to the Pakistani economy in the months ahead.
These include decline in investments, cost of the war against militancy, haemorrhaging public-sector enterprises, colossal waste in development projects, a dismal tax base and the politicians’ preference for import-based solutions rather than initiating serious structural reform to make the local economy more competitive internationally.
But the real issue for Pakistan is that revenue generation through taxes is beset by structural problems, meaning that not only is existing revenue generation unacceptably low but also that revenue generation cannot easily be ramped up when the time comes for paying all the debt the country is increasingly being saddled with.
Pakistan receives economic aid from several sources as loans and grants.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), Asian Developmenet Banck (ADB), etc provide Pakistan with long-term loans.
Pakistan also receives bilateral aid from developed and oil-rich countries.
Political situation in Pakistan is also getting perplexed as pressure is mounting on President Asif Ali Zardari to give up some of his powers including appointment of Army Chief and dissolving of assemblies.
Earlier the Supreme Court’s verdict quashing a controversial amnesty law known as National Reconciliation Ordinance also had placed the government in political crises.
Some commentators believe that the Supreme Court verdict is a warning for presumptuous, overly ambitious and corrupt politicians.
Former Pakistan Prime Minister and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif has been criticizing the PPP led government calling it as a failure.
He has also been criticizing the Gilani administration for the widespread massive corruptness saying that it has lost its trustworthiness among the country’s people.
He said that the PML-N’s main concern is to bring those to righteousness who have broken the Constitution of the country.
The past record of the democratic forces in the country’s history is also quite poor and there is widespread expectation that renewed political turmoil could set the stage for yet another military intervention.
The gulf between the ruling PPP and PML-N widened after both the parties had failed to find a solution acceptable to both the parties for judges’ restoration and the PML-N had pulled out of the four-party alliance setting stage of a major political show down two weeks before the presidential elections.
Later the judges were restored through a long march by the opposition and lawyers.
The PML-N claims that repeated violation of agreements by the Pakistan people’s party had forced them to withdraw their support and sit in the opposition.
The people of Pakistan were hopeful when PML-N and PPP announced to unanimously resolve their problems including restoration of judiciary, however, collapse of ruling coalition had revived traditional political bitterness.