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ISLAMABAD: The Privatisation Board has decided to resume the privatisation of Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation (PMDC) by seeking fresh approval from the Council of Common Interests (CCI).
The secretary of Privatisation Commission, Shahid Hussain Raja, informed the National Assembly’s standing committee on privatisation here on Thursday that the PMDC’s sale had been put on hold because of lack of a fresh approval from the CCI which had previously approved the corporation’s privatisation in 1997 and 2006.
Federal Minister for Privatisation Ghous Bux Khan Mahar informed the committee that the privatisation of OGDCL and PPL which were to go private this month had been put back and would now take place early next year. The CCI had already approved the privatisation of three GENCOs and nine DISCOs, he added.
The standing committee, which met under the chairmanship of MNA Malik Bilal Rehman, advised the privatisation commission to be more careful before privatising GENCOs and DISCOs because it felt the government was already facing problems after the privatisation of KESC.
The committee once again recommended to hold a larger meeting to discuss OGDCL’s privatisation, which it termed confusing, and called federal secretaries of finance, law and justice and cabinet division to attend the next meeting of the committee and make a comprehensive review of the OGDCL issue.
The committee formed a five-member subcommittee headed by MNA Khawaja Sohail Mansoor to review the privatisation policy of the commission and submit a report to the committee.
The commission informed the committee that Rs276 million and Rs261 million were released for flood relief activities during the current fiscal year. Rs261 million were spent on advertisement campaign for flood relief activities, he said.
Expressing concern over this expenditure, the committee decided to take up the issue at its next meeting.
