ISLAMABAD: The government has decided to bring in professional expertise to improve the governance of the state-owned entities (SOEs), and a proposal to reconstitute the board of Sarmaya Pakistan Limited (SPL) will be submitted to the prime minister in the coming weeks.

Chairing a meeting on Thursday, Finance Adviser Abdul Hafeez Shaikh emphasised the need to contain losses in a number of SOEs through better governance and active supervision.

Hafeez stressed that immediate attention is required to contain the losses in a number of SOEs which are a cause of losses to the national economy.

Better governance and active supervision is expected to bring in considerable improvements, he remarked.

Noted economists including Shaukat Tareen and Zubyr Soomro and senior officials of the Ministry of Finance attended the meeting.

In March this year, the government appointed eight members of the private sector on the board of directors of SPL, a holding company established to administer the SOEs. The decision to reconstitute the board indicates that the government has decided to speed up the process of privatisation.

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2019