ISLAMABAD, Nov 4: The Privatization Commission Board will meet here on November 10 to review the process of privatization and to specially discuss the early disinvestment of Karachi Electric Supply Corporation, National Bank of Pakistan and Habib Bank Ltd.
Officials told Dawn here on Tuesday that the meeting to be presided over by Investment and Privatization Minister Dr Hafeez Shaikh would take into account various reasons which were contributing to the somewhat slow process of privatization.
The deliberations of the meeting would be placed before the Cabinet Committee on Privatization (CCoP) expected to be held on November 13 under the chairmanship of Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz.
The PC board, the officials said, would update and modify the KESC’ request for statement of qualifications (SoQ) documents. Similarly, it would review the third offering of NBP’s shares, which were oversubscribed at Rs1.21 billion.
The meeting would further discuss the privatization of Habib Bank with a view to selling it before the end of 2003 along with the transfer of management to a strategic buyer.
“Generally, the meeting would look into the implementation status of various transactions so far lined up for early privatization,” said a source, adding that the Privatization Commission did not want to sell state sector entities in a haste and that the purpose was to ensure complete transparency in every deal.
However, sources said that President Pervez Musharraf in one of the recent briefings called for improving enabling environment so that foreign investors could take part in the country’s privatization programme.
The president told the participants of the briefing that without a strong commitment to privatization, the process of disinvesting the state sector could not be satisfactorily accelerated.
The sources said the finance minister during the previous two CCoP meetings urged the officials of the Privatization Commission to expedite the sell-off process so that billions of rupees annual losses to the exchequer could be avoided.
The PC officials were told that since there had been strong liberalization and deregulation, stable exchange rate, increasing reserves and vibrant capital market, local and foreign investors should greatly needed to be attracted to take part in the privatization.