Restructuring methods should, therefore, encompass the fields of business organisations and finance. He said, most of restructuring being attempted pertains merely to finance and hence becomes unsuccessful. The absence of a competition policy with statutory regulators, lack of corporate governance and entrepreneurship and a huge unproductive labour force have conspired to render the public sector units sick.

Ganesh said that the commission should have been entrusted with the powers to implement government decisions on disinvesment.

"In the past, attempts to privatise PSUs had failed due to the `intransigence' of ministries controlling the PSUs and the absence of a central body to carry out the disinvestment process," Ganesh said.

He said that if the government entrusted the Commission with powers to carry out the selloff, it would have been in line with the practices in many countries as nowhere such a body was set up for making mere recommendation. He further called for reduction of the bureaucratic layer in the current disinvestment process.

If PSUs slated for disvestment/privatisation are transferred to the department of disinvestment, it would ensure faster decision-making and implementation, Ganesh added.

Calling for corporate governance, the report said the PSUs should be permitted to function as commercial entities, take investment and pricing decisions and select their chief executive and board members. Further, the accountability of the CEO and the board members has also to be ensured.

Ganesh said that people were either ignorant or unwilling to believe that if PSUs were not privatised today, the jobs of all PSU labour would be in jeopardy. "The first privatisation has provided for retention of labour for a period of one year, by which time increased investment and modernisation should ensure retention of a larger number of them," he said citing instances of privatisation increasing employment in the longer run.