The Council of Common Interests (CCI) will not meet here on Wednesday as its chairman Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is leaving for Malaysia to attend emergency summit session of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) called to review the situation arising out of Israel's aggression against Lebanon.
It was the CCI's first meeting after restructuring to take up a number of issues pertaining to public sector entities' sell-off and the most important one was the Pakistan Steel Mills' (PSM) sell-off.
The Supreme Court had ordered the government in PSM case to form the CCI and take its approval before offering public sector entities' of strategic importance such as PSM for divestment.
The government followed the court orders and formed the CCI with the Prime Minister as its chairman. Its other members are four chief ministers, ministers for inter-provincial co-ordination, narcotics control division and states and frontier region.
The CCI will also take up other issues of power and gas royalty and water sharing among provinces. It can also take up the issue of water reservoirs as they involve more than one province.
The last CCI meeting was held in 1997 during the Nawaz Sharif regime and it had approved privatisation of different sectors' entities including banking, industrial, power and oil and gas.