Body formed to assess state-owned enterprises’ impact on budget

The government has constituted a four-member committee to determine the legal status of those state-owned entities (SOEs) which are not covered under the existing SOEs Act of 2023 but remain a major fiscal risk to the federal government for being their large size and impact. According to a notification issued on Monday, the committee led by the Additional Secretary of Corporate Finance comprised the director-general of the newly created Central Monitoring Unit (CMU) on SOEs in the Ministry of Finance, Legislative Adviser Law & Justice Hassan Mehmood and Executive Director of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) Mubasher Saeed. Senior government officials said the SOEs Governance and Operations Act 2023 introduced in January 2023 covered most of the SOEs as required under the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for increased monitoring and vigilance over their financial health and impact on federal budget but there were still a large number of entities which had been established under their specific acts of parliament.