A Pakistani real estate developer announced on Wednesday that it has fulfilled the necessary conditions to participate in the upcoming bidding for a stake in the national airline, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), set for later this week.
The chairman of Blue World City, Saad Nazir, confirmed to Reuters in a text message that his company is the only one to enter the final bidding process, declining to disclose the earnest money it had submitted.
Nazir also said the group is also looking into acquiring operations of the Islamabad International Airport which the government is looking to outsource.
Earlier, Bloomberg reported that the government received just one bid for a stake in the national carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), as five other consortiums stayed away from one of the country’s major privatization attempts.
Ahsan Ishaq, a spokesman for the Privatisation Ministry, was quoted as saying that the bidder deposited “earnest money” for the transaction with the Privatisation Commission by Tuesday’s deadline.
Earnest money is a deposit made to a seller that represents a buyer’s good faith in making a purchase.
However, Ishaq did not disclose the name of the interested party.
It is better to recall that in September, the Privatisation Commission pre-qualified six bidders for the sale of PIA, including Fly Jinnah, a consortium led by YB Holdings, Air Blue Limited, a consortium led by Pak Ethanol, Arif Habib Corporation, and Blue World City.
The initial target was to complete the privatisation by August 14 and then by October 1, but delays occurred as bidders requested updated financial records, aircraft lease agreements, and information on the airline’s suspended European flights, which have been grounded for nearly four years.
PIA has been grappling with a debt load of around Rs800 billion ($2.9 billion), and the government has extended several bailout packages to cover its operational costs.
