Regulatory Authorities in Pakistan

Pakistan is a mixed economy which consists of both free market and government bodies that regulate the free market for the prosperity and stable growth of the economic well being of the country. These regulatory authorities were not found right at the time of independence except State Bank of Pakistan, they were founded when there was in need of one. These authorities are named as follows.

• SECP
• SBP
• NEPRA
• PEMRA
• PTA
• OGRA

The purpose of these authorities is enforcing standards without giving any sort of favoritism to any private organization. Another purpose to regulate the prices of the goods and services provided by the companies in their respective domains, this includes the tariff and taxes too. However these organizations are not completely autonomous, whenever they propose a big change, a certain authority i.e. the prime minister is going to accept and make it official. The recent example was the proposed increase in the oil prices by OGRA and prime minister not accepting it.

Now let’s discuss how they select their chairperson and their board of directors collectively and then individually. All the board members are selected by the federal government including the chairperson. The board members consist either of different organizations other the regulatory body (that includes both private and government) or from the four provinces of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtun Kha. Sindh and Balochistan.

SECP board consists with a maximum of nine board members. Five of them are ex-officio members and the rest of them are from private sector. The SECP website has list of its existing board members.

SBP board is cumulative of its governor who is also the chairperson, secretary and eight board of directors which includes one from each province and she must have and affiliation to the field f economics, accountancy, banking or finance. The directors of SBP are appointed on a three year term.

The NEPRA board consists of total 5 members including the chairperson. Other than the chairperson the four members must be from each of the four provinces. The vice chairperson is selected amongst these four members for the period of one year and changes subsequently. Currently the vice chairperson is from Khyberpakhtunkhwa.

The PEMRA board has a total of 13 members. These include a chairperson, one executve member, four ex-officio members, and 7 members which again includes the 4 provinces.

OGRA member list consists of 4 people only. One is chairperson, and the rest of the members belong to finance, oil and gas ministries.

PTA similar to the last one has only three members including the chairperson, member finance and member compliance and enforcement.