LAHORE, Oct 17: The Chief Minister’s Taskforce on Horticulture has defend PHA’s policy of raising the reserve price for bids by claiming that advertisers’ groups had conspired to build “pools” and artificially fix prices.

Reacting to claims by advertisers that the PHA had unfairly opened bidding prices at up to three times the price of the previous year, instead of the standard 10 per cent increase, Khawaja Imran Raza, who is principal staff officer to the chief minister, stated that “independent experts” had determined a value for what the new prices ought to have been and the PHA had acted on the experts advice, rather than allowing the market to decide the rate.

He accused advertisers of crying foul only because their previous preferential rates, established without transparency, no longer held.