ISLAMABAD: A number of State Owned Entities (SOEs) including Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), Pakistan Steel Mills and Lahore and Faisalabad Electric Supply Distribution Companies would be privatized within next six months.
“Before inviting the letter of intent, transaction structure of the process would be submitted to the Cabinet Committee on Privatization for approval”, said a senior official of Privatization Commission (PC) said here on Tuesday.
Talking to APP, he said other entities to be privatized during next six months included Kot Addu Power Company (KAPCO), State Life Insurance Corporation and Mari Gas etc.
He said up to 70 percent of privatization process of the sate owned entities has been completed by the Privatization Commission. The road shows for selling off the SOEs would also be organized in different countries including Turkey, China and Russia to attract foreign direct investment.
During the road shows, the foreign investors would be convinced to take benefit of the governments investment and privatization policies and come forward to invest in Pakistan as the law and order situation has been improved considerably. He informed that the letter of intent for Faisalabad Electric Supply Company has already been sought from the private sector.
The Privatization Commission has been working on the privatization of these entities for the last 18 months and the process has been speed up on the directive of Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif. He said the public sector entities were being privatized to improve the quality of service for the people.
The most important task would be to ensure improvement in the services of these entities after privatization. To a question, he said that so far 150 entities have been privatized since start of the privatization process in 1991. He admitted that the process has been very slow in the past, however the present government is taking keen interest to expedite the process.
