Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) owes Rs 96 billion to Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) on account of airport charges.
This was stated by Secretary CAA Shahrukh Nusrat while briefing the subcommittee of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which met here under the chairpersonship of Sherry Rehman on Thursday to review and discuss audit paras of CAA of the financial year 2014-15.
The secretary aviation further said that an amount of Rs 7.45 billion is outstanding against local and global airlines for using Pakistani airports.
The secretary CAA said that outstanding amount against Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) is Rs 6.90 billion out of Rs 7.45 billion, while the rest of the amount is outstanding against other local and global airliners. The committee directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to present the details of the global companies owing multimillion rupees on account of airport charges to the CAA. Shahrukh Nusrat further said that PIA has to pay Rs 96 billion to the authority on account of airport charges, adding that the amount was piling up with each day passing.
The chairperson committee said she has no words to explain the worsening financial situation of the national flag carrier and does not know how ailing organisation will pay such a huge outstanding amount to CAA until fixing of the entire system of PIA.
The panel also expressed serious anger over the CAA management for its failure to timely conduct Departmental Accounts Committee (DAC) to review and discuss the audit paras, saying that the PAC has given a number of deadlines to the authority but every time the officials came up with lame excuses.
The panel was informed that CAA could not manage to utilise Rs 687.5 million developmental funds earmarked in 2014-15 budget and the amount was lapsed.
Sherry Rehman said that the issue of supplementary grants kept emerging during the governments of all the parties and now this matter should be resolved once for all. She expressed serious reservations over the lapsed budget of CAA, saying that she was astonished to see that institutional capacity to utilise the developmental budget is gradually eroding.
The panel decided not to take up any issue of supplementary grant till the approval from Parliament and directed the officials concerned to get Parliament's approval on supplementary grants as early as possible.