ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Privatisation was informed on Thursday that government expects to fetch $2 billion from the privatisation of 1,223MW Balloki and 1,230MW Haveli Bahadur Shah power plants.

An evaluation committee has been formed in the Privatisation Commission to evaluate expressions of interest, technical and financial proposals submitted by interested parties for hiring of financial advisers, Secretary Privatisation Rizwan Malik informed the committee.

The Cabinet Committee on Privatisation has approved initiation of the appointment of financial advisers.

The power plants are owned by the National Power Management Company.

As a result of the evaluation process, bids from five consortiums have been short-listed. Out of which, bid from a consortium of Credit Suisse, Elixir Securities, EY Ford Rhodes, Lummus Con­sul­­tants Interntaional, Akhund Forbes Hadi and Lathman and Watkins has been approved.

The Standing Committee held its meeting in the Parliament House under the chairmanship of MNA Syed Mustafa Mahmud to provide a comprehensive briefing on the government’s privatisation programme.

Govt to divest stake in SME Bank

With respect to the privatisation of the SME Bank, privatisation secretary informed the committee that the bank was consistently incurring losses and the government – which owns around 93.88pc shares of the bank — plans to divest 100pc of its stake along with management control to a strategic investor.

Moreover, three consortiums have submitted their technical and financial proposals and the evaluation is expected to complete within next few days.

The committee has asked for opinion from the finance ministry, State Bank of Pakistan and SME Bank on the bank’s privatisation in its next meeting.

The remaining share in the bank — around 6.12pc — is held by six commercial banks.

SME Bank has a paid-up capital of Rs2.39bn and is operating with a network of thirteen commercial banks.

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2019