The ruling party of PML-N has backed off from its privatization plan, which has over its term of tenure so far added $1.72billion in various forms of privatizations. Pakistan international airlines and Pakistan steel mills were also, part of this much-hailed approach to improve the loss enduring sectors. Despite, interest from Emirates and Etihad airlines to buy Stakes in PIA, the government has retreated itself from the privatization, as a result of strong outcry and demonstrations against the privatization. Flights were suspended for nearly three days and also, one casualty occurred during the protests.
There are many looking to invest in the two major sectors, PIA and PSM according to the sources and also Emirates and Etihad Airways keenly seeking Stakes in PIA said one of the officials.
The loss bearing sectors have inflicted gruesome Rs500 billion upon the economy and taxpayers have to ultimately bear the wrath of these losses. There were many occasion when the government has decided to restructure the sector to improve the efficiency but in last two years, no such thing occurred on concrete footings.
The government did sell some stakes in Habib bank limited and United bank limited but as the part of the requirement of $6.2billion bailout from the International monetary fund to either restructure or sell out the stakes in loss enduring sectors was not fully in essence implemented.
The government is not planning currently to sell out PIA rather it will restructure and privatize part of it like management, and making special company to take care of its fixed assets. but it will be among others on the priority list for privatization and hopefully, the partial privatization of PIA might take place in April.
Similar is the case of PSM, which the Sindh government is not willing to sell nor it wants to take over. Also, the parties in Sindh have strongly opposed the idea of privatization and government has no time out of Panama cases to improve economic prospects.
The government has so far completed 5 transactions of privatization out of 69 and privatization of National power construction corporation (NPCC) that earned the exchequer Rs2.5billion was among those five.
