Days after the federal privatisation minister claimed that the government is committed to selling off the core business of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) before April 15, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Aviation Sardar Mehtab Abbasi on Tuesday ruled out any possibility of the national flag carrier's privatisation before elections.

Presenting a report before the Senate on PIA's progress, Abbasi said finalising the privatisation of the airlines during the tenure of the incumbent government was quite impossible.

He said he was not seeing any serious effort on the part of the government to privatise PIA.

"The government is about to complete its tenure, whereas it is quite impossible to complete the process of privatisation within next two months as the process takes years to be completed," he elaborated.

The adviser said the PIA employees and administration were striving hard to restore the airline's past glory.

"The PIA administration has been told not to accept any external pressure," he said, without elaborating. He added that the issue of PIA's privatisation has created unrest among the employees.

He further said that PIA is a commercial company and commercial institutions follow their own rules and regulations.