The government will publish an advertisement next week to attract new bidders for the privatisation of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), the privatisation ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s failed first attempt to privatise PIA cost the national exchequer $4.3 million, the National Assembly Standing Committee on Privatisation was informed on February 26.<\/p>\n
Last month, Privatisation and Investment Minister Abdul Aleem Khan said that the government would complete all the steps to privatise PIA by May, while the pri\u00advatisation commission approved a transaction structure for the second attempt to privatise the national carrier based on a divestment of 51 to 100 per cent of its shares of capital.<\/p>\n
According to a statement from the ministry, the privatisation commission had a meeting today, chaired by Muhammad Ali, commission chairman and the Adviser to the Prime Minister on Privatisation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Board approved the pre-qualification criteria for selection of potential bidders for privatisation of 51pc to 100pc shares of Pakistan International Airlines Corporation Limited (PIACL),\u201d the statement read. \u201cA fresh advertisement for [the] expression of interest for the demerger of PIACL is planned to be published next week.\u201d<\/p>\n
The statement added that the meeting will continue tomorrow \u201cto consider the remaining items on the agenda\u201d.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, a PIA spokesperson said that the carrier\u2019s bo\u00ad\u00adard of directors approved its fin\u00adancial results for 2024, which showed the airline achieving a net profit after around 21 years.<\/p>\n
According to the results for FY2024, PIA earned an operational profit of Rs3.9 billion and a net profit of Rs2.26bn. The airline\u2019s operating margin was more than 12pc, which is on a par with the performance of any of the best airlines in the world, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
PIA began to be unprofitable in 2011, requiring government subsidies. By the end of 2016, the national flag carrier was saddled with $3bn in debt. At the end of 2018, the airline was burdened with $3.3bn in debt, up from $2.97bn the year before. Government bailouts were required for the carrier\u2019s continued operation.<\/p>\n
Last year in June, the then-government had agreed to overhaul loss-making state-owned enterprises, including PIA, under a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $3bn bailout. But in February 2024 \u2014 right before the general elections \u2014 the election commission had asked the then-caretaker administration to \u201crefrain\u201d from finalising the deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The government will publish an advertisement next week to attract new bidders for the privatisation of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), the privatisation ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. The government\u2019s failed first attempt to privatise PIA cost the national exchequer $4.3 million, the National Assembly Standing Committee on Privatisation was informed on February 26. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8277,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8278,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8276\/revisions\/8278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}