October 01, 2006	Sunday	Ramazan 7, 1427

ISLAMABAD, Sept 30: Pakistan is likely to offer additional fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to the international institutional investors with a view to luring them to make new investment in the country.

"Although we have a very liberal investment policy that helped achieve an all-time high over $3.5 billion foreign direct investment (FDI) by June this year, the government would very much like to further facilitate foreign investors," said Minister for Privatisation and Investment Zahid Hamid.Talking to Dawn on Saturday on telephone from Dubai, he said he and Dr Salman Shah were currently visiting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait for attracting institutional investors to invest in various fields, including the privatisation.

"We are here to hold country road shows for institutional investors and to explain them about various investment opportunities and exceptional good performance of the Pakistani economy," Mr Hamid said.

"This is an effort to further attract foreign investment on a sustained basis for which the Pakistan government would provide all possible incentives," he said adding that there existed an improved investment climate and better security situation in Pakistan.

Responding to a question, he said that there was no FDI target for 2006-07, but it was expected to be much higher than that of over $3.5 billion achieved in the last financial year.

He was sure that investment houses, commercial banks and other international financial companies based in the Middle East would invest in Pakistan.

The minister for privatisation and investment said that the Privatisation Commission had lined up a number of transactions, which will be completed during the current financial year.

He said that the institutional investors of the UAE and Kuwait were largely expected to take part in the privatisation programme of Pakistan.

"We have identified a broad-based privatisation programme, which is being shared with the investors of the UAE and Kuwait," he said and hoped that they would benefit from the investment opportunities that now existed in Pakistan.

The commission, he said, has accelerated the privatisation process to finalise a number of transactions including that of Pakistan State Oil (PSO) during 2006, positively.

"We are finalising dates to further push up the privatisation process and both the PSO and OGDCL's Global Depository Receipts (GDR) along with some other state-owned entities will be disinvested during 2006," he said.

He said he was deliberately avoiding giving exact dates for clearing some bigger transactions at this stage, although their timings had been firmed up by the PC.

He said the government was committed to vigorously pursuing its privatisation policy and to transfer the management of the public sector entities to the efficient private sector, which had the capacity to bring in new investment and latest technology for expansion of the projects to increase production and revenues of the government.

Earlier, on September 9, the privatisation board approved recommendations of the committee for pre-qualification of the bidders for the privatisation of National Power Construction Corporation (NPCC). It discussed matters related to the secondary public offering of the shares of the United Bank Limited (UBL) and offer of shares to employees of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL).

The PC board also discussed the recommendations of the committee for the proper sequencing of strategic sale of the public sector entities to be offered and the initial public offering (IPO) as well as secondary public offering for the divestment of government shares through capital market.

The PC board also considered the case of Saindak Metals Limited and Saindak Development Corporation (SDC) and recommended their de-listing from the privatisation programme in view of the fact that the project has been leased out for 10 years to a Chinese company.

In the case of public offerings, this would not only benefit small investors but also increase market capitalisation.