Islamabad : After receiving one bid, the Privation Commission has decided to go ahead with the original sell off plan for Pakistan International Airline (PIA).
Sources in the Privatization Commission told NEWSMAN , requesting anonymity that the legal team of the commission discussed the issue of the single bid in its meeting held here on Wednesday and decided to go ahead for holding bidding for Privatization of the national flag carrier on Thursday.
The Privatization Commission had extended the date to October 29 for submission of earnest money, amounting to Rs 250 million, to qualify for participating in bidding for sell off of PIA and only one bidder –Blue World Consortium –had met the requirement.
Read More: Five Groups Withdraw from PIA Privatization
Other five bidders, which were in the runs for the transaction , had stayed away from depositing the earnest money.
Since, the Privatization Commission had set September 25 as the last the deadline for submission of the earnest money and later extended it to October 29 on the request of the intending bidders , it can hold bidding for the transaction with only one bidder.
After one time extension , there is no legal bar on the Privatization Commission to shying away from holding bidding for sell off of PIA.
PIA is running in huge loss and the government is injecting billions of rupee every years to keep it flying .
Also Read: Bidding of PIA Sale Off Scheduled for Oct 31
Now with rising financial woes and demand of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) , the government is going to sell off PIA , most probably majority shares with management, to the bidder -Blue World Consortium.
Talking to this scribe , Saad Nazir , Blue World Group chairman , said ” We are going to buy loss -making PIA just for keeping a national pride up”.
Saad Nazir added that the Blue World Consortium, will try to win the bid for PIA and if got successful it will make the national flag carrier a great airline again.
He said, ” We have companies of international fame with huge experience in airline to run PIA around and make PIA a pride for Pakistan in the real term”.