Govt completes privatisation of Heavy Electrical Complex

The government has successfully privatised the Heavy Electrical Complex (HEC), a power transformer manufacturing facility, by handing over the share certificates to the buyer M/S IMS Engineering (Pvt) Limited on Tuesday.

The buyer paid Rs1.4 billion for the 96.6% shares in the HEC and also took over additional liabilities of Rs 752 million payable to the Bank of Khyber. The bank issued an NOC for the conclusion of the transaction.

This was the first entity-level strategic transaction since 2015 and the fifth attempt at privatising the HEC with prior unsuccessful efforts in 2006, 2011, 2013 and 2015. 

Earlier,the Privatisation Commission executed the bid on February 21, 2022 for selling 96.6% stakes in the HEC to IMS Engineering at Rs 99.999 per share which would fetch Rs1.41 billion for the government. PEL and Waves-Singer were unsuccessful bidders.

The bid for the government’s 14.4 million shares was carried out as per the transaction structure approved by the Federal Cabinet in December 2020. 

The caretaker Minister for Privatisation Fawad Hasan Fawad congratulated all the stakeholders who contributed towards the sale agreement and hoped that the privatisation would result in increased productivity, new employment, tax revenue and foreign exchange earnings for the country.

The chairman of IMS Engineering, Mahmoud Haq, said that they have plans for better utilisation of the facility and expect to make exports of 250-300 million dollars in two to three years. 

He also informed that they are replacing the current setup with state-of-the-art German-made machinery and equipment and will also endeavour to meet local demand which is currently met through imports.

HEC is located in Hattar Industrial Estate, Haripur near the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor route and has an annual production capacity of 3,000 MVA.