via Chaikhanah
As you’re all aware of what’s going on which leader’s past interview been played and which political party is taking a U-turn on its manifesto or doing politics, without getting into any of that lets have a realistic and unbiased view of it.
Governments should restrict themselves to governing only and not venture into running businesses. An institution which isn’t generating any profit since ages and is a financial or administration burden should be privatized.
Is PIA overstaffed? Is PIA in losses since many years and a burden? If the answer is ‘Yes’ privatize it. We are aware of it that PIA is under massive debt & accrued losses that have wiped off its equity.
All these politically motivated protests [violence] isn’t helping anyone but aiding in further losses.
Instead of asking the right questions the opposition is just busy doing politics. Their focus should be to make sure that the government is privatizing PIA in accordance of international practices, make sure the privatization is transparent, and is it open to all stakeholders, make sure that the information to be made available to all and are the cost-benefits clearly defined?
Governments main objective of privatization is the revival of PIA, to relief itself from the financial, administration burden and facilitate economic growth.
Let’s have a quick look at some of the indicators.
To gauge the efficiency of the airlines employees-per-aircraft is one way. “The average number of employees per aircraft varies from 59 for the smallest to about 117 for the largest airline; marginal number of employees at an average airlines is 126” – Milan Janic, The author of ‘The sustainability of air transportation’.
According to N. A. Jafar, Chairman PIA [August 2015] PIA fleet size is 35 [11 ATRs, 9 A320s, 9 Boeing 777s & 6 A310s] out of which only 30 operational and 5 under repairs.
An average of 17,747 employees, do the math.
PIA operating expenses:
Profit & loss:
2015 [half yearly]: The PIA incurred a net loss of PKR 14011.902 million resulting in accumulated losses of PKR 240,863.243 million as of June 2015 and PIAs current liabilities exceeded its current assets by PKR 169.443.539 million. These conditions indicate the existence of a material uncertainty which may cast significant doubts on PIAs ability to continue.
Net worth:
If there were any doubts about PIA decline/losses/mismanagement, there shouldn’t be now.
Is privatization the only solution for such enterprises?
No, but considering the long-lasting mismanagement and inefficiency that infected our state enterprises cannot be rooted out instantly and all at once. Corruption in Pakistan is a tradition of decades here and we the people are responsible for it. We’ll need few more decades to come out of it that too if we all honestly start working against it yesterday and anyone who claims to end corruption from Pakistan in 90-100-300-5000 days is….
If anything or anyone could revive PIA as a state enterprise it would’ve happened in last fifteen years, when many political stakeholders are partners in PIA management it isn’t possible to decrease the staff under governmental management.
What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it is supposed to be, be realistic and focus on the right questions rather than of wasting time thinking privatize it or not.
Sources: all the above mentioned figures are authentic and taken from audit reports of renowned firm.
GenialMalik 