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Pakistan to outsource Islamabad airport next month

by Haroon Amin
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Pakistan is hoping to finalise the outsourcing of Islamabad’s international airport in November 2024, the country’s finance minister said on Wednesday.

Muhammad Aurangzeb spoke to AFP at the World Bank’s headquarters in Washington, where he is attending the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

The government has reportedly outsourced or contracted out the Islamabad International Airport to its preferred foreign consortium after excluding the other competitive bidder. It is considered to be the first project of transferring control of Pakistani airports to the private sector under the International Monetary Fund’s IMF suggestions as part of a new $7 billion loan program.  

Danish Janjua claimed his consortium was unjustly denied participation in bidding for the Islamabad International Airport’s public-private partnership project.  

He further spoke, that his consortium team reached the designated tender submission room in the vicinity of the denied international airport of Karachi on time despite moving through the time-consuming security checks following as the result of a suicide attack about 14-15 hours before the end of the tender submission time at 3 p.m. on Monday.  

Read more: Pakistan Begins Process To Outsource Islamabad Airport For 15 Years

When he arrived, he exclaimed a strong perception created that tender documents were being reviewed and examined and the consortium team was directed forward to the waiting room. At 3:05 p.m., the delegation was told that the time for submitting documents had been delayed. Before this, the consortium submitted Rs. 7.5 billion to become highly eligible to participate in bidding.  

It extensively worked for 7-8 months to prepare for participation in the tender. In that respect, the consortium filed a complaint in writing with the Director General of Airport Service at the Pakistan Airport Authority, PAA, in Karachi against the arbitrary removal of the consortium from the procurement process.

These irregularities directly contravene the guiding principles of transparency and fairness, ensuring the public purchasing ability of the authority under the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority Ordinance 2002 and the Rules 2004, which intend to enhance transparency to secure optimum value for public funds and health competition by strongly encouraging broad participation in the acquisition of purchasing processes.  

In strict compliance with the RFP requirements, the consortium has given all needed documents to create its qualification including a bank guarantee dated 07-12-2024 amounting to Rs. 1.5 million, which highly satisfies the security requirements of the RFP consortium.  

The consortium highly emphasized that its representatives came on time and the actions of the PAA constituted a calculated delay ostensibly in a bid to stop the consortium from highly participating in bidding under the guise of late arrival. 

 This conduct smacks of mala fide intentions and serious concerns about the integrity of the procurement process. The intentional hindrance claims a pre-mediated concept to remove the consortium, enhancing the appearance of an orchestrated effort to highly favor the other vital and guarantee a non-competitive process, claimed. 

By causing the delay and then claiming a technicality to justify the removal, PAA highly compromised the fairness and transparency vital to public procurement, raising suspicions about the legitimacy of its actions and the credibility of the bidding process, the consortium further added. 

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