ISLAMABAD: A meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Privatisation (CCoP) has delisted SME Bank from the privatisation programme to enable the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the Finance Division to proceed further with alternate options.
On the matter of privatisation of Services International Hotel (SIH), the CCoP meeting presided over by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar was informed on Monday that buyer has served a legal notice for delay in signing of sale deed, transfer of title, and handing over property to him.
The Privatisation Commission informed the CCoP that the buyer, Faisal Town (Pvt) Ltd has issued a legal notice on 4th October 2022 due to delay in signing of sale deed, transfer of title, and handing over property to him as failure to do so will invoke seeking necessary remedies from the courts. The meeting after detailed deliberation referred the matter to the Law and Justice Division for review of its earlier advice.
Giving background, the meeting was further informed that in August 26, 2021 an extensively advertised open public auction was held, wherein, Faisal Town (Pvt) Ltd submitted the highest bid of Rs1,951,718,500 that was approved by the CCoP and ratified by the federal cabinet in October 2021.
The process was successfully completed and Letter of Acceptance (LoA) was issued and buyer deposited the full payment on in January 2022.
However, on the directions of Prime Minister’s Office conveyed in June 9th 2022, PC presented the details of SIH transaction to the CCoP in its meeting held on June 24, 2022. The CCoP constituted a sub-committee under the chairmanship of Minister for Privatisation with representatives from Finance Division, Law and Justice Division, and Secretary Privatisation Commission as Members, to review the SIH transaction.
Current value assessed at Rs1.951bn: Rs2bn previous valuation of SIH was reasonable, CCoP told
The subcommittee after detailed deliberations decided to conduct a fresh valuation of the property through an independent valuer from Punjab based valuers on the Panel-1 list of Pakistan Banks’ Association. The valuer submitted its valuation report on 15 August 2022 and assessed the fresh value of Rs1,951,076,000 adopting market value approach and Its 1,461,000,000 based on residual land value or discounted cash flow method.
The sub-committee after due deliberations concluded that the previous valuation was reasonable at the time it was auctioned.
The report of the sub-committee was presented before the CCoP in its meetings held on 7 September 2022 and 13 September 2022, whereby, PC was directed to re-submit the summary to the CCoP after seeking inputs from Law and Justice Division.
Accordingly, comments were sought from Ministry of Law and Justice, which has suggested that fresh valuation matter be referred to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to deeply probe and determine that the valuation as per the prevailing market rate and in conformity with the proposed structure which can be constructed on the site.
Regarding privatisation of PIA Investment Ltd (PIA-IL) Owned Asset- Roosevelt Hotel, New York, the CCoP decided to uphold its earlier decision dated 2nd July 2022, where the meeting directed the Privatisation Commission (PC) to initiate the process of appointment of Financial Adviser (FA) to undertake envisaged leasing of Roosevelt site for meeting up a joint venture project for prospective mixed-used development, through the best suited mode of privatisation.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
Comments
Comments are closed.