Jinnah Convention Centre: Govt misleading IMF on privatisation plan

Official contests government report about hiring of financial adviser .

ISLAMABAD:

Government seems to have submitted a misleading report to the International Monitory Fund (IMF) about its plan to privatise Jinnah Convention Centre, one of the capital city’s landmarks.

Contrary to a written confirmation given to the IMF that the government has already hired a financial adviser to undertake privatisation of the complex, it surfaced on Monday that the government has not yet advertised this post.

Located at one end of the Constitution Avenue, the imposing building is one of the public sector enterprises (PSEs) the government intends to privatise this year.

Sixth review report of the IMF released on April 7, says Pakistan has given a written confirmation to IMF that it will sell out 100 per cent assets of the Convention Centre by the end of August.

“We have hired a financial adviser for the Convention Centre in January 2015 for a transaction by August 2015,” says the review report available on IMF website.

However, a senior official of the Privatisation Commission, who wished not to be named, told The Express Tribune that no adviser has been hired for the process yet.

The official said that the commission has been planning to hire a financial adviser to assess value of the property. He said that the post would be advertised soon.

This discrepancy has created doubts about transparency of the privatisation process, he said.

“If the government has already hired an evaluator or a financial adviser for this transaction, as it claimed before the IMF, then the post has been filled without advertising, which is a violation of the procedure and rules,” the official said.

And if the post is still vacant, it would mean that the IMF had been misled, he added.

When contacted, Minister of State for Privatisation Muhammad Zubair said he was abroad on an official assignment and would respond to the query in an hour. After an hour though, he neither attend repeated calls nor responded to text messages.

The Convention Centre, which was built to host the then Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in 1997, has consistently been on the list of entities to be privatised ever since.

The covered area of the building is 202,075 square feet. Several halls and galleries have a seating capacity of 2,200 people at a time, while the three parking lots have a total capacity of over 600 cars.

The building also houses five committee rooms and 32 smaller conference rooms.

Currently, it is being managed by the Capital Development Authority and is mainly used by universities to hold their convocations and by the government for ceremonies on national days.

Commerce Minister Khurram Dastagir Khan had, a few months ago, informed the Senate that the government was privatising the complex because it was making loss. He has said the government was incurring a loss of Rs56 to Rs60 million a year from the centre.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2015.