RAWALPINDI, April 3: The Pakistan International Airlines has earned a profit fo Rs2.110 billion in the year 2002 after five consecutive years of suffering losses amounting to more than Rs12 billion.

This was observed at a meeting of the airline’s board of directors on Thursday held to approve the annual accounts of the airline for the year 2002.

After the meeting, General Manager of Public Relations Imran Gardezi told reporters that cash flow from operations witnessed a phenomenal increase of 166 per cent despite adverse circumstances created by visa restrictions and reduction in operations to regional/Far East markets due to ban on flying over Indian airspace.

Mr Gardezi said the board was told that the new marketing strategy contributed to improving cash flows as the available capacity, due to reduction in the Far East operations, was redeployed on high yielding routes. Revenue generation, he said, was particularly high on Pakistan-Toronto and Pakistan-UK routes.

He said independent auditors had observed in their report that due to the efforts of the management, the corporation’s financial position had significantly improved this year.

Earlier, the finance director, Kaleem Malik, while presenting the accounts at the meeting, said this was for the first time in many years that PIA’s equity had crossed over to positive. The total revenue during the year was Rs43.674 billion, while the operational expenditure was Rs38.097 billion.

President of Habib Bank Zakir Mehmood said the management had taken an important decision to clean up the balance sheet, which would put the airline on strong footing.

Breaking the tradition, the PIA chairman, Ahmed Saeed, himself moved a resolution before the board in which he appreciated the services of his predecessor, Lt-Gen Hamid Nawaz Khan (retired), for pulling out the national carrier from the verge of bankruptcy and collapse.

The internal auditors observed that the management had initiated the process of aircraft acquisition to replace the corporation’s aging fleet as envisaged in the long term business plan 2003-2011 approved by the board.