Secretary Finance Dr Waqar Masood has stated that the proposed public private partnership authority law is aimed at undertaking mega projects in the country and Infrastructure Project Development Facility (IPDF) would also be merged into it.
While briefing the Senate Standing Committee on Finance meeting, chaired by Senator Saleem Mandviwalla, the secretary finance said that the proposed law to the committee for consideration would provide a framework for an authority to regulate the joint ventures between public and private sector. "There are already too many authorities and yet the government wants to create another white elephant," Senator Mohsin Leghari commented.
On this, the secretary finance said the government would provide one-time funding and rest would be generated by authority from its own resources. "It would not be a burden on the national exchequer," he added.
He further stated that both developed and developing countries are undertaking projects through public-private partnership. "We have prepared and moved public-private partnership law to the Parliament to provide a structure of the authority for promotion of public-private partnership," he said adding that proposed law provides details of the structure and functioning of the authority as well as its composition. Waqar Masood said the finance minister would head the authority and if authority thinks there is a financing gap, it would recommend to the government and Finance Ministry would provide funds to bridge the deficit.
All the agreement between public and private sector as well as other documents would be available with the Authority, added the secretary finance. He said once the law is implemented, the IPDF would also be merged into it.
The committee also deferred discussion on amendments proposed by the chairman of the committee to the Economic Reforms Act, 1992 after representatives of various banks, invited by the committee to give their views, stated that placing any restrictions on foreign currency accounts may shatter the confidence of account holders. They added that $6.5 billion in the commercial banks are quite sizeable to supplement foreign exchange reserves and cash withdrawal from the foreign accounts is not very large. They also added that there are enough safeguards which satisfy all the issues and outflow of remittances are monitored by declaration of document by the customer.