Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Finance Advisor Muzammil Aslam has strongly condemned the Punjab government’s purchase of an aircraft for 11 billion rupees, highlighting the expenditure as a stark contrast to the federal government’s recent sale of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) shares.
In his statement today, Mr. Aslam compared the purchase to the Shahbaz Sharif administration’s decision to sell 75% of PIA’s shares for a mere 10 billion rupees, pointing out that the cost of the provincial government’s new aircraft is one billion rupees more than the proceeds from the sale of the national airline’s shares.
The Finance Advisor criticized the purchase of a 19-seater aircraft to serve a province with a population of 130 million people, calling it an example of “poor governance.”
To illustrate the scale of the expenditure, Mr. Aslam noted that a standard nine-meter bus can accommodate 50 passengers. He calculated that the 11 billion rupee cost for the 19-seater aircraft, which he dubbed “Air Punjab,” amounts to an investment of 580 million rupees per passenger.
Furthermore, the advisor emphasized that this hefty initial cost does not include the additional, ongoing operational expenses, which would include maintenance, fuel, and crew costs.