ISLAMABAD – Pakistan’s Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has said that the privatization of the national carrier would be completed by June this year.
In an interview with a private TV channel on Thursday, the Finance Minister said Minister for Privatisation and Board of Investment Abdul Aleem Khan is working on the privatization of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).
The minister also expressed hope that the government will soon begin to receive bids for the PIA – a crucial step in the privatization of the airline that has been dealing a blow to the national kitty.
It is to be mentioned that the decision to privatize the carrier is due to multiple reasons including overstaffing that has triggered financial losses to the tune of billions.
The caretaker regime had engaged a financial advisor who had submitted a complete report in this regard. While the carrier’s employees union criticizes the move, the government is set to privatize the airline as the consensus has been built due to the financial nonviability.
The estimated annual losses of PIA are Rs153 billion, prompting the lawmakers to find a solution to finally get rid of the entity that was once an asset.
The calls for privatizing the airline were made during the previous regime and the follow-up deliberations also led to promulgation of the Privatisation Ordinance to remove the role of high courts in privatization transactions aimed at avoiding legal hitches.
The state-owned Pakistan International Airlines has been under fire for denting a severe blow to the national exchequer and facing hiccups due to multiple factors. Time and again, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) freezes its accounts while Pakistan State Oil (PSO) also refuses to supply oil to the carrier.
The airline recently settled a dispute with an Indonesian firm and got possession of one of its aircraft though the airline failed to prove itself sustainable in the long term which has forced the policymakers to finally do away with it and hand it over to a private investor.
