پی آئی اے، کیا خسارے پر قابو پایا جا سکے گا؟
By Arman Sabir
Having disturbed with the persistent huge financial losses in the Pakistan International Airlines every year, the federal government has taken notice of it and brought changes in the top slot of the national airline.
During the past four years, the airline has seen three chairmen and four managing directors but billions of rupees losses every year have not been controlled so far.
The PIA has been faced with the huge losses for sixth consecutive year. The airline made profit of more than Rs two billion in the year 2004 but the company bore the huge loss of Rs32 billion in the year 2008 and Rs26 billion last year.
The inner circles of the national flag carrier termed wrong decisions either by the government or by the senior management of the airline for yielding huge losses and when attempts were made to cover up the wrong decision, more complications developed inflicting more financial set backs to the national flag carrier.
This week the Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf appointed Lt Gen (Rtd) Asif Yasin Malik as new Chairman of the PIA and Junaid Yunus as Managing Director.
General Asif Malik retired from Army in December last and was appointed as Federal Secretary of Defence in the mid of this year.
The new PIA’s MD Junaid Yunus had been performing as acting MD since September this year after the Air Chief Marshal (Rtd) Rao Qamar Suleman relinquished his charge as MD on his health reasons. Junaid Yunus has experience of 34 years in aviation. He has been a pilot and director corporate as well.
Experts say that hopes and possibilities are there but the government has to keep an eye on the performance of the airline to get it out of the recurring lossess and making it a profitable organisation.
Inside circles in the PIA were of the view that the national flag carrier got a strong leadership after a long time and now it was their challenge to make the company profitable without laying off any of the employees.
PIA’s spokesman Syed Sultan Hasan said that the PIA’s financial year spans from January to December and it earned a profit in the month of September this year.
Many critics held the PIA’s management responsible for recruitment beyond the capacity. They said that most of the times in the past such recruitments were made on the pressure by the governments.
However, the spokesman Sultan Hasan ruled out this perception saying that the PIA spent only 14 per cent of its budget to the head of salaries while other international airlines allocated up to 25 per cent of their budget on salaries of their employees. ‘This reflects that the PIA does not have employees beyond the capacity”, he asserted.
Stating the reasons behind the losses, he said that the PIA had purchased some aircrafts in the past and due to disparity between Pakistani rupee verses US dollar, the PIA had to repay the amount of loan manifold while on the other hand the fuel prices went up and these two factors were the main reasons for accumulating losses.
The spokesman said that after taking over by the new leadership, the PIA would focus reducing expenditure and adopt austerity measures besides taking advantage of the modern techniques of marketing to increase the revenue.
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