Despite Rs85b expected price
\nISLAMABAD
\nPakistan International Airline (PIA) has attracted Rs10 billion from the sole bidder for a stake in the national carrier against the minimum expected price of Rs85 billion.
\nThe government had pre-qualified six groups in June, but only one \u2014 real estate development company Blue World City \u2014 participated in the bidding process, placing a bid that is below the government-set minimum price of Rs85 billion Pakistani rupees.
\nThe development comes as Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif\u2019s administration is looking to offload a 51-100% stake in debt-ridden airline to raise funds and reform bleeding state-owned enterprises as envisaged under a $7 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme.
\nThe Privatisation Commission said it had asked the bidder to match the minimum bid.
\nHowever, the bidder stood by its offer, saying: \u201cWe wish the government all the best if they don\u2019t want to accept our bid.\u201d
\nThe bidding process was previously deferred by one month and was rescheduled from October 1 to October 31 (today).
\nOfficials from three groups that chose not to bid told Reuters on condition of anonymity that there were concerns about the government\u2019s ability to stand by agreements made for the flag carrier in the long term.
\nOne executive voiced concern about policy continuity once a new government came in. The government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has relied on a coalition of disparate political parties.
\nThe disposal of PIA is a step former governments have steered away from as it has been highly unpopular given the number of layoffs that would likely result from it.
\nUnderpinning these concerns over policy continuity and honouring contracts was the government\u2019s termination of power purchase contracts with five private companies earlier this month, as well as the process of re-negotiating other sovereign guaranteed pacts.
\nChanges in Pakistan\u2019s decade-old agreements with private IPP projects, largely financed by foreign lenders, to address chronic power shortages, \u201craises the risk of investing as well as doing business in Pakistan, even in the presence of sovereign contracts as well as guarantees,\u201d said Sakib Sherani, an economist who heads private firm Macro Economic Insights.
\nOther concerns raised by potential bidders included inconsistent government communication, unattractive terms and taxes on the sector, in addition to PIA\u2019s legacy issues and reputation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite Rs85b expected price ISLAMABAD Pakistan International Airline (PIA) has attracted Rs10 billion from the sole bidder for a stake in the national carrier against the minimum expected price of Rs85 billion. The government had pre-qualified six groups in June, but only one \u2014 real estate development company Blue World City \u2014 participated in the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":72339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72363,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72331\/revisions\/72363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}