Privatisation of power & energy sector must for shielding bankruptcy, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

Former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said that privatisation should be carried out in the energy sector in a speedy manner to save it from sheer bankruptcy.

Abbasi was addressing as the chief guest at the inaugural session of the 16th CSR Summit and Awards-2024 organised by the National Forum for Environment and Health (NFEH) at a hotel on Wednesday.

Former Premier said the power and energy sector companies were unable to clear their liabilities for long against the electricity, oil, and gas they purchased as they had already been on the brink of bankruptcy.

He said that energy sector problems massively accounted for the current economic crisis as the agenda of privatisation should be implemented without any further delay to resolve these issues.

He said that privatisation was the only way forward for the new government to overcome the economic crisis as the rulers and bureaucracy could not ingeniously run the economy as per the requirements of the present day world.

Abbasi said that without privatisation the massive issue of circular debt involving trillions of rupees could not be resolved. Karachi Electric, which as a Disco was being efficiently run after privatisation. Other Discos should be privatised in the same manner, Abbasi concluded.

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi lamented that the bureaucracy in Pakistan couldn’t implement such market-driven modern solutions to save the national economy as the bureaucrats were still reliant on decades-old administrative options that don’t work anymore.