August 17, 2002	Saturday	Jamadi-us-Saani 7, 1423

LAHORE, Aug 16: The State Bank has yet not approved Muslim Commercial Bank’s “funding plan” for the purchase of United Bank Limited, says Privatization Minister Altaf M Salim.

Talking to reporters here on Friday, the minister said as soon as the SBP approved the MCB funding plan, the bids of MCB as well as of an Abu Dhabi group for UBL would be presented before the Cabinet Committee on Privatization for its decision.

MCB has offered Rs12 billion and the Gulf investor Rs12.3 billion for the purchase of 51 per cent shareholding of UBL.

The minister said the SBP was looking at the MCB funding plan to ensure that it did not involve the money of depositors.

He said the expressions of interest (EoIs) for HBL would be opened on Monday. Following that the interested parties would be asked to complete the due diligence at the earliest, hoping to hold the final bid for HBL in October.

At present the public sector holds about 42 per cent share in the financial sector of the country. Mr Altaf said with the privatization of UBL and HBL, the government’s share in the financial sector would reduce considerably.

He claimed that the strong privatization law introduced by this government had ensured disinvestment of public sector units worth Rs36 billion without any litigation from any losing party. He said the privatization proceeds were transferred to the central bank which had used 90 per cent of them to pay off expensive domestic debt. The rest of the funds were given to the government for poverty reduction programmes.

Mr Altaf said the privatization of public sector units had helped the government save millions of rupees and plug loopholes and leakages of the public money.

The minister said regulatory bodies like Nepra and Ogra had been formed to regulate different sectors. He said these bodies would take some time to become efficient and provide relief to consumers.