the government has once again extended the deadline to the last quarter of this calendar year, underscoring the challenges it faces in initiating the privatisation process.
The government will also not be able to privatise any other entity in the current fiscal year, missing even its modest target of collecting a nominal Rs30 billion through privatisation proceeds.
PIA’s bidding is now expected to take place in the last quarter (October-December) of this year, said Muhammad Ali, the Adviser to the Prime Minister on Privatisation, after speaking at the Business Summit organised by Nutshell Group. The adviser spoke at length about the obstacles to the government’s privatisation agenda.
Last month, the privatisation ministry had informed the IMF that the PIA bidding was expected to happen in July 2025 and that an expression of interest to invite bidders would be issued in March. However, the government has again missed both of these deadlines.
The expression of interest will now be issued before the end of this month. After that, investors may need three to five months to complete the due diligence process and reach the bidding stage.
The government has once again approved the transaction structure that requires selling a minimum of 51% of shares in PIA to a private party. It is not clear whether an affiliate of a government ministry or department would be treated as a private party. This should be clarified in the expression of interest documents.
There have been unconfirmed reports about PIA’s profitability, but its accounts have not yet been made public to verify whether the claims refer to operational profits or accounting gains.
The first attempt to privatise PIA in October last year failed because the government ended up with only one bidder. Two other bidders backed out due to disagreements over tax waivers and clearing the remaining balance sheet.
