Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has constituted a high-level committee to urgently reform the governance framework for state-owned enterprises (SOEs). This decisive action comes in direct response to an investigative report by The News, which exposed how the CEO of a ministry-affiliated SOE accumulated over Rs355 million in salaries, bonuses, and benefits within just 32 months of his appointment in 2022. The report revealed that the executive, who started with a fixed monthly salary of Rs500,000, exploited legal loopholes to grant himself enormous perks, including unjustified performance bonuses and lavish spending on foreign travel.
The committee, notified by the Cabinet Division, is tasked with reviewing and streamlining the appointment and governance processes of SOE boards to prevent such egregious abuses of power. Official sources expressed grave concern that the SOE Act of 2023, which was amended on the advice of the IMF to improve governance, is instead being misused by top management to grant themselves unchecked authority and lavish benefits at the taxpayers’ expense, with fears that this case might not be isolated.
Chaired by the Minister for Establishment, the nine-member committee comprises key secretaries from the Finance, Law, Commerce, Power, and Cabinet divisions, the FBR chairman, and private sector experts. Its key mandates include identifying legal gaps in the SOE Act of 2023, eliminating bottlenecks in board appointments, ensuring complete transparency in CEO pay packages and board decisions, and proposing concrete reforms to curb the misuse of powers granted to “independent” boards.
The committee has been given a strict deadline of three weeks to submit its recommendations. This move underscores the government’s alarm over the potential systemic misuse of billions of rupees of public funds and its commitment to enforcing accountability and transparency in the management of the country’s state-owned assets.
