Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday that bidding for Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) would be held on December 23 with a live media broadcast. The government has been seeking to sell a 51-100 per cent stake in the struggling national airline to raise funds and reform cash-draining, state-owned enterprises as envisaged under a $7 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme. It would be the country\u2019s first major privatisation in nearly two decades. Four bidders have been pre-qualified for the sale: Lucky Cement Consortium, Arif Habib Corporation Consortium, Fauji Fertiliser Company Limited and Air Blue Limited. A press release posted on X by state broadcaster PTV News said that the prime minister held a meeting with all corporate entities and company representatives participating in the privatisation process of the national airline. \u201cPIA\u2019s bidding will take place on December 23, 2025, which will be broadcast live on all media,\u201d the statement quoted the prime minister as saying. He said the process was proceeding smoothly to restore the national carrier\u2019s \u201clost prestige\u201d and align it with modern requirements. \u201cSoon, PIA will once again live up to its tradition of \u2018Great People to Fly With\u2019. \u201cWe are ensuring transparency and merit in the privatisation process of PIA,\u201d he was quoted as saying. The prime minister said the restoration of PIA\u2019s flights worldwide would provide convenience to overseas Pakistanis, stressing that aligning it with modern requirements was \u201cextremely essential\u201d for the tourism sector\u2019s development. \u201cI am hopeful that whoever among you takes on this important responsibility after the bidding will focus all their energies on restoring the prestige of the national airline and its development,\u201d the prime minister said. The press release added that the participants \u201ccommended the professional and transparent approach adopted by the government\u201d during the entire process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday that bidding for Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) would be held on December 23 with a live media broadcast….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29240,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news-updates"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}