Chairman Privatisation Commission Muhammad Zubair on Friday said that the privatisation of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) and Faisalabad Electric Supply Company (FESCO) was top of the agenda for the government’s privatisation process.
“The two state owned entities (SOEs) are incurring huge losses for the national exchequer, therefore, the government is determined to privatise the two SOEs,” Zubair said while briefing media persons.
He said the Privatisation Commission (PC) had always stated its commitment to ensure the highest standards of integrity and transparency in conducting all its transactions.
He said the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government, despite facing the most critical odds, had managed to conduct the best transactions including that of Habib Bank Limited (HBL), United Bank Limited (UBL) and Allied Bank Limited (ABL).
He said due to the best efforts of the Commission, it had won global awards in recognition of its transactional work on the divestment of GoP shareholding in HBL and ABL.
He said the awards had been awarded by The Asset, one of Asia’s most prestigious corporate ranking journals.
In 2014, PC had already won two international awards for its transactional work on UBL, he added.
Muhammad Zubair said that these transactions were conducted at a time when the environment was not conducive for marketing as the economic situation and the law and order situation of the country was not good and there was political instability of 2014’s sit-ins.
“However, things have changed now, the economy of the country has been strengthened, the growth rate is over 4 per cent and the law and order situation has also improved considerably,” he added.
To a question, Zubair said the transaction of PIA would be held in a free, fair and transparent manner and its assets would not be undervalued.
He said the PC had the responsibility to ensure that the assets were evaluated according to the market.
Privatisation Commission Secretary Ahmed Nawaz Sukhera and other officials were also present on the occasion.
Pt you are no different to other papers. A slave of ministry of information for a few bucks.
Comments are closed.