Pakistan Awards Rs 14.2 Billion in Assets to New PIA Owners

Pakistan Gave PIA's New Owners Properties Worth More Than They Paid to Buy the Airline

The Pakistani government has transferred 11 properties worth Rs 14.2 billion to the new owners of Pakistan International Airlines as part of the privatisation deal, a figure that exceeds by Rs 4 billion the Rs 10 billion cash the buyers actually paid to acquire their 75% stake. The detail, disclosed to Pakistan's Senate Standing Committee on Privatisation on July 15, is the kind of number that raises questions about who got the better end of this deal. 

The properties transferred are worth more than the purchase price. That sentence needs to sit for a moment.

What Was Actually Handed Over

The transferred assets include four properties in Pakistan and seven located overseas in India, the Netherlands, Uzbekistan and the United States. On the domestic side, the Peshawar sales office on Arbab Road alone was assessed at Rs 5.1 billion, making it the single most valuable asset in the transfer. The overseas portfolio includes two floors at Narain Manzil in New Delhi, three properties across Amsterdam, a Tashkent office and a residential property in Scarsdale, New York. 

The remaining 33 properties have been retained under the PIA Holding Company. That retained portfolio is where the larger prizes sit, including the Roosevelt Hotel in New York and the Scribe Hotel in Paris, alongside sales offices, warehouses, a farmhouse, hundreds of acres of land and a housing colony. The government plans to take the Roosevelt Hotel to market by December 2026, with several US-based banks already expressing interest. 

The Full Picture of the Transaction

The property transfer is one layer of a deal that is larger than the headline numbers suggest. The buyers paid Rs 10 billion to the government and injected Rs 80 billion into PIA as fresh equity to strengthen the airline's finances, expand and modernise its fleet, improve services, and support long-term growth. The total acquisition values PIA at Rs 180 billion, with Rs 55 billion going to the government and the remainder reinvested directly into the airline.

PIA had accumulated more than $2.8 billion in losses over the years before the Arif Habib Corporation-led consortium took over. The Rs 80 billion equity injection, approximately $288 million, is the new owners' opening commitment to turning that around, and it dwarfs the Rs 10 billion they paid to acquire control. 

The New CEO and What Comes Next

The new owners have appointed Tewolde Gebremariam, the former CEO of Ethiopian Airlines, to lead the turnaround. That is a significant hire. Gebremariam oversaw Ethiopian Airlines' transformation from a struggling regional carrier into Africa's most profitable airline, a restructuring that combined aggressive fleet expansion, hub development and route network discipline over two decades. If anyone understands how to rebuild a loss-making national carrier from a weak financial base, it is him.

The agreement also stipulates that the new management cannot lay off any PIA employees for the first year of operation, a constraint that limits the restructuring options available in the short term but reduces political risk for a transaction that required years of government commitment to close.

Pakistan has been trying to privatise PIA for decades. The deal finally closed on June 29, 2026. The properties transferred to the new owners are worth more than what they paid. Whether that generosity translates into an airline that actually works is the question the next few years will answer.