PMLN Government All Set To Lease Pakistan Steel Mills and PIA

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced his children Hassan & Hussain are blessed with amazing business managing abilities. At the tender age of 16 they had become billionaires by running their steel mills, one of the most successful businesses all over the world Lakshmi Mittal is a fair example of a "King of Steel". Sadly, state owned Pakistan steel mills couldn't be handled by PMLN leadership and it is now set up for lease to a foreign country.

Moonis Elahi, Imran Khan, Chaudhry Pervaiz and many other prominent opposition leaders have expressed their concerns over such decisions. Inability to revive the steel mill in 3 years proves incompetence of the N league.

The premier has finally been taken to court over the Panama Leaks issue, the nation demands to know if you can't run state owned businesses to be profitable, how is it possible that your personal businesses flourish but every government business fails under your leadership? Where do their earnings go?

To me as an ordinary citizen of Pakistan it is quite disturbing to know that most of our national businesses have totally collapsed. In my search to find the truth about PMLN's abilities I began skimming through official accounts on Twitter (as it is mostly accurate and is updated frequently) of our prominent leaders.

This one made me bang my head on the desk:

How Mr Ahsan Iqbal do you claim Pakistan to be an emerging market? Leasing out factories doesn't mean investors are considering your country as an emerging market but if new factories are set up and new entrants enter the competition then we can call it progressive. To me as a common man who faces common problems throughout the year, this is just fake publicity.

We didn't have electricity throughout summer to support factories and businesses and now its winter and we don't have Gas! Utility bill prices are hiked with the arrival of a new season and yet every institution reports loss. You need loans for every project and even to run the country every month and still we are in lead? Our textile industry is now doomed because winter is coming and your government has announced gas load shedding.

I then came across a tweet by Moonis Elahi:

Though this isn't directly aimed towards the PSM decision but truly portrays what our incumbent government is capable of. To add injury to insult, PIA also reflects their inefficiency and we've heard rumors in the past it was up for lease too but that didn't happen. PIA is another state owned business that files losses each year but our leaders in power aren't concerned by it. They rather build new Metro trains and Metro buses but can't make reforms in national policy to bring back national railways and other national businesses to their feet. Mr. Moonis Elahi has said it in the best way.

The headline in Dawn made my heart sink as I read Chinese and Iranian firms are interested to take over our loss bearing Pakistan Steel Mills. If these companies are willing to take over, they must be sure it is profitable so why can't Pakistan? Obviously the monthly profits will fly off to the country that succeeds in the bidding. But this profit could have been used for the benefit of our own nation.

Money acquired from leasing it will be a onetime payment and God knows where will it be used, to buy another luxury flat through some offshore company or to buy Rolex's for the Sharif and family? Mr. Ahsan Iqbal, may your claims be true and my fears prove to be wrong, but I couldn't disagree with the Tweet by Moonis Elahi that N League may be full of successful businessmen but they aren't willing to promote state owned businesses.

Pakistan's Self Proclaimed Master of Finance Ishaq Dar Set Out to Destroy PSM

On 1st December Ishaq Dar ordered the Pakistan Steel Mills to settle its debts to the state owned banks as well as foreign creditors. In a drive to privatize National institutions, Pakistan Steel Mills has been finalized to be privatized and investors from China have shown interest to bid when its privatization process starts. 

Moonis Elahi pointed out that PSM has been reporting losses since a decade and neither the Zardari nor PMLN government could assign talented people to take its charge and bring it out of the mess it has fallen due to corruption. The workers have been staging protests as their salaries haven't been transferred since months. In a meeting held at Islamabad between the Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, PSM Management and Privatization Committee, the issue of PSM's outstanding debts was discussed. 

The minister issued orders for the steel mills to sell its assets and settle the Rs. 51 billion loan it owes. Moonis Elahi has said the nation is in shock over the news and widely questions if the Sharif brothers policies can make their personal steel mills to reap billions of profits a year, why are they hesitant to implement the same policies for a State owned company that could have saved it from destruction? If assets are sold, the company would further decline in value and it would soon be worthless. The country's largest industrial unit had been shut down for over a year and a half after SSGC had cut its gas supply over defaulting its Rs. 18 billion in terms of outstanding gas bills.