NA body defers SOE, FRDL bills for accommodating PPRA rules

Feb 14, 2022: The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue here on Monday deferred the State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) and the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation (FRDL) bills 2021 till Wednesday, (February 16) for accommodation of Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules.

The committee, which met here under the chairmanship of Member National Assembly (MNA), Faiz Ullah, discussed various points of the Bill and decided not to approve it in hurry.

Briefing the committee about the Bill, the Finance Ministry said the bill was aimed at establishing a Central Monitoring Unit (CMU) in the finance division, which also maintained an electronic database of the financial and operational performance of the sate-owned enterprises.

The CMU would undertake analysis on the financial, commercial and operational performance of the SOE for which recommendations would be submitted to the federal government on the matter related to the performance.

Secretary Ministry of Finance, Hamed Yaqoob Sheikh told the committee that under the SOE bill, 2021, the state owned entities would maintain independent procurement policies with the approval of the federal government.

He said, the new act would not be in contradiction with the Company’s act.

On the occasion, an official of Ministry of Finance informed the committee that there were over 200 SoEs and overall losses were around Rs145 billion, adding, the losses were mainly incurred from Discos, Pakistan International Airline, Pakistan Steel Mills, National Highway Authority whereas the profit earning entities were Oil and Gas Development Company Limited and Energy.

Meanwhile, on debt limitations, a finance ministry representative briefed the committee about FRDL and informed that currently the debt guarantees by the government stands at six percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which would be brought down to 2 percent of GDP through legislation.

He said the bill proposed to bring overall debt to GDP ratio to 60 percent and outstanding guarantees to 10 percent of GDP.

He said the target of debt stock and guarantees had been proposed at 70 percent of GDP.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO), EXIM Bank, Irfan Bukhari also briefed about the function and working of the bank.

APP