2nd highest bidder given 45 days to match KESC bid price
KARACHI, June 25: Privatization and Investment Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh has said that the Privatization Commission (PC) has offered 30-45 days to the second highest bidder of the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation (KESC) to come up and match the highest bid price.
Talking to newsmen after inaugurating the $100 million “Project Ittehad” of Multinet Pakistan to lay down optic fibre backbone, the minister said, “I don’t know exactly about deadline but I think they have a time of one or one and a half months.”
“We have asked the second highest bidder Hassan Associates to come forward and match the highest bid price earlier offered by the Kanooz al Watan Group,” he added.
However, he did not elaborate further on the issue.
Hassan Associates is expected to hold a meeting on Monday (June 27) for the entity’s sell-off deal with the privatization authorities.
According to a press release, the minister said that the privatization ministry had asked the government to set up a separate poverty reduction fund. “The federal cabinet is expected to take up the issue in its next meeting,” he added.
“As per current regulations 10 per cent out of total proceeds generated through privatization is utilized for the poverty reduction programme but we have asked to establish a separate fund under the ministry,” he said.
Dr Hafeez said the government was firm on its privatization programme and had marked more national entities for privatization.
After the successful sell-off of PTCL — PPL, PSO, Pakistan Steel, Musthekum Cement, and other would come under the hammer.
Earlier, the minister said that the government policy to deregulate the core economic sectors were paying fruitful results and attracting huge investment from both local and foreign organizations.
Telecom is the best example in this regard, he told the inaugural ceremony. “The government is expecting more competition in the telecom sector in the days to come which will ultimately benefit the consumers across the country.”
He said boom in telecom sector attracted $445 million as total foreign direct investment during July to December 2004, which stood at $277 million during the same period of 2003.
Nasser Ghazi Khan, CEO Multinet Pakistan briefed about the project, which he said would require $100 million. He said earlier this year Telekom Malaysia acquired 78 per cent equity in Multinet Pakistan and announced the launch of ‘Project Ittehad.’
The blue-print of the project suggested that the company would lay down 4,500-km high-speed and higher capacity fibre optic link, which would link 77 cities of the country.
Mr Khan said the optic fibre backbone would cater to the needs of Pakistan’s booming telecom sector offering carriers’ carrier service to cellular operators, long distance international, local loop, wireless local loop operators, broad-band and Internet service providers.
“The project is estimated to be completed in 14 months and will result in a highly accessible, fully redundant and resilient DWDM backbone with 20 gigabytes per second operational capacity and 48 cores of dark fibre,” he said.
