Business Desk 
Dec 20, 2024
Following a recently failed bid to sell the major stake of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), the government of Pakistan is reportedly getting bigger bids to privatise the national flag carrier.
Disclosed during a National Assembly session on Thursday, the purportedly enhanced bids follow months of struggles by the government to privatise the profitless national flag carrier.
With these bids stemming for the next stride towards the privatisation of PIA, Federal Minister for Law and Justice Azam Nazeer Tarar lauded the reopening of European routes for PIA flights while expressing optimism about the newly offered bids.
For not being able to privatise or revitalise the PIA, the incumbent government earlier attracted strong criticism from Naveed Qamar, Abdul Qadir Patel and Shazia Marri of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) – the biggest ally of the ruling PML-N.
Although the stream of better bids this time has widely been acclaimed among lawmakers, Tarar was of the view that those in authority are unable to project the outcome of the bidding process.
“The privatisation process needs to be carefully planned. This time, we anticipate improved bids and a more favourable outcome […]lessons learnt from past mistakes have been corrected to make the next plan more successful,” said the law minister.
He lamented that the previous bid was not corrupted in any technical way but faced some issues that necessitated the services of top-notch firms.
To buy the national flag carrier, the Blue World Consortium offered a bid of Rs10 billion, significantly lower than the bare minimum of Rs85bn. The bid was assessed by the Privatization Commission Board and later rejected.
