New Delhi. You must have heard the saying 'poverty is like adding insult to injury', but if you want to see it come true, just look at Pakistan. When Pakistan, which is drowning in debt and poverty, wanted to sell its only government airline, it could not find a buyer at first and now when it found one, it made such a bid that Pakistan realized its poverty.

Pakistan's only government airline, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), is deeply in debt. In return for a loan of $7 billion from the International Monetary Fund, Pakistan was asked to sell its debt-ridden airline. After this, Shahbaz Sharif's government started looking for buyers. In June, the Pakistan government pre-qualified 6 groups, out of which real estate development company Blue World City was finalized as the final bidder.

How much was the bid received?
The Pakistan government had set a minimum price of 85 billion Pakistani rupees (about 250 crore rupees) for selling its airlines. At this price, the government was preparing to sell a 60 percent stake in the company, but the bidder offered only 10 billion Pakistani rupees (about 30.25 crore Indian rupees). This amount was just the 8th of the price fixed by the Pakistan government.

The bid was going on live
. Pakistan also made this bid live in the whole country. A live session was organized in a hotel in Islamabad, which was also broadcast on the government news channel PTV. However, despite so much pomp and show, the bid was canceled and the plan to sell the airlines remained unfulfilled. After the cancellation of the bid, Blue World City chairman Saad Nazir said, ‘If my bid is rejected, then I wish the Pakistan government all the best.’

How much property does Pak Airlines have?
The total property of Pakistan Airlines is around 152 billion Pakistani rupees, which also includes aircraft and operational routes. Currently, around 7,100 employees work in Pak Airlines, out of which 2,400 employees work on daily wages. The airline has a debt of about 1 billion rupees and is continuously going into losses. The biggest problem is that the European Union has banned this airline since 2020, because some pilots were caught with fake licenses.

The state of Pakistan has shown interest.
While on one hand, no foreign lender is ready to buy Pakistan Airlines, on the other hand the state of Pakistan has shown interest in buying it. Pakistan's Punjab province I.,e. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has shown interest in this airline. The Chief Minister here, Maryam Nawaz, has talked about buying Pak Airlines and running it under the name of Air Punjab. The Parliament of Pakistan has not yet given any reply to this offer of Maryam, daughter of former PM Nawaz Sharif.