January 24, 2002	Thursday	Ziqa’ad 9, 1422

ISLAMABAD, Jan 23: The Privatisation Commission has said that lack of investors confidence, pricing policies, weak regulatory framework and excessive litigation were largely responsible for slow pace of privatisation process in the past.

Reacting to Dawn’s article, Delay in the Privatization, published in weekly EBR on last Monday, a spokesman of the PC said that much of the “delay” was not really a delay.

He said that in the aftermath of September 11, many of the interested parties specially the foreign ones, requested delays until the regional situation stabilised.

Thus PTCL, government’s interest in nine oil and gas fields, UBL, National Power Construction Company, Pak Saudi Fertiliser, Hyatt Regency hotel and Fletti’s hotel were all targeted to go for bidding in the first half of 2002.

“In other cases, transactions proceeded with only minor delays,” he admitted, saying that Lasbella Textile Mills, minority share sales of National Bank where 27,000 applications were received, and monitory shares in the MCB were offered for bidding in November 2001.