Islamabad, December 24,2025: Defence Minister Khawaja Asif on Wednesday said the government was satisfied with the privatisation of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), describing the transaction as having significant “symbolic value” given the airline’s troubled history and the scale of the deal.
Speaking on a private news channel, the defence minister said the PIA sale marked the largest and most consequential transaction under the government’s privatisation drive. “Yes, the government is satisfied. This is the first biggest transaction of our privatisation process, and it carries great symbolic value,” he said, noting that while First Women Bank had previously been privatised, that deal was not comparable in scale.
A consortium led by the Arif Habib Group won the auction for a controlling stake in Pakistan International Airlines Corporation Limited (PIACL) on Tuesday with a bid of Rs135 billion, following a competitive and televised bidding process. The sale marks Pakistan’s first major privatisation in nearly two decades and is a key component of the government’s plan to offload loss-making state-owned enterprises under a $7 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme.
Asif said the transaction carried symbolic importance due to the events that severely damaged Pakistan’s aviation sector in recent years. Recalling developments in 2020, he referred to a statement by then aviation minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan, who had claimed in parliament that hundreds of Pakistani pilots held fake or questionable licences. Following that statement, European and UK authorities banned PIA from their airspace, while several foreign airlines grounded Pakistani-origin pilots. The fallout came shortly after a PIA plane crash near Karachi in 2020 that claimed nearly 100 lives.
“These developments pushed PIA to the brink of bankruptcy,” Asif said, adding that the government subsequently undertook restructuring measures and absorbed a major portion of the airline’s liabilities, leaving only nominal liabilities behind. “Against this backdrop, yesterday’s transaction is a very successful one,” he remarked.
The defence minister also credited the civil aviation authorities for their role in restoring confidence and facilitating the privatisation process, calling it a “painstaking” effort. He noted that PIA has resumed flights to Manchester and has obtained permission to operate services to Birmingham, London, New York, and around 14 to 15 destinations in Europe, though the airline currently lacks sufficient aircraft to utilise all these routes.
Defending criticism over the financial structure of the deal, Asif said the government’s decision to receive only 7.5 percent of the sale proceeds in cash—around Rs10 billion—while reinvesting the majority back into the airline was aimed at increasing PIA’s long-term value. He said the government still holds 25 percent of PIA’s shares and that reinvesting 92.5 percent of the sale amount into the airline constituted an investment in a national asset.
“We did not give a handout to anyone,” he said, adding that Pakistan had borne losses for more than five decades following the nationalisation of businesses. He blamed chronic losses in state-owned enterprises on bureaucratic inefficiencies, while acknowledging that politicians also shared responsibility.
“We have to construct such transactions to rid the national exchequer of these losses. We don’t have a choice,” Asif said, adding that similar privatisation or restructuring efforts would be pursued in other sectors. In this regard, he pointed to heavy losses being incurred by power distribution companies in Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan.
Responding to a question on accountability, Asif said action would be taken against those responsible for mismanagement. He criticised the practice of retired bureaucrats securing lucrative board positions in state-owned enterprises, calling it a long-running “loot and plunder” of the public sector.
On PIA’s overstaffing issue, the defence minister said that even if employees had to be paid more than their due amounts to facilitate separation, it should be done to stop the airline’s “continuous bleeding.”
Commenting on the broader political environment, Asif said any potential dialogue between the government and the opposition would require first defining the issues on which talks are to be held.
