When the Abraaj Group bought the majority of K-Electric’s shares from a Saudi and Kuwaiti consortium in 2009 and took full operational control, it never hid its plan of trying to quickly turn around the utility company’s financial performance and sell it at a profit. It comes as no surprise then that K-Electric will be sold to Shanghai Electric Power for $1.77 billion, which represents a significant profit for the Abraaj Group who paid $361…
Posts published in “Day: November 1, 2016”
A LONG journey might be about to end for Abraaj Group, the Dubai-based private equity fund that had made the bold move of acquiring a majority stake and management control in the beleaguered Karachi Electric Supply Company back in 2009. Those were troubled days as everyone remembers, when the first-ever privatisation of a power utility in Pakistan was floundering. Nobody really understood what Abraaj was up to and the move was met with a heavy…
No matter where one looks in Pakistan China is engaged, and that engagement is increasing month-on-month. The latest area of acquisition by the Chinese is KES power, the conglomerate that has been providing electricity — mostly at a considerable profit — to Karachi for several years. The deal was done in Shanghai a week ago but has only just been announced and KES is to divest itself of K-Electric which is the country’s largest and…
GILGIT: Pakistan and China kicked off first trade activities under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project (CPEC) on Monday as over a hundred Chinese containers arrived at the Sust port after clearance from customs and an inaugural ceremony was held at the port a day earlier. Sust is a village in Hunza. It’s the last town in Pakistan on the Karakoram highway before the Chinese border. The containers left for Gwadar after custom clearance. The ceremony…
GWADAR: The chairman of the Gabd Kalato Union Council in Gwadar district, who had been kidnapped about a week ago, was found dead on Monday. The bullet-riddled body of Mohammad Waleed was found in Khairabad area of Turbat. Police said four armed men had kidnapped Mr Waleed when he was coming back to Turbat from a condolence meeting in Jan Mohammad Bazaar area Dashat area. People in Khairabad informed the local administration about the presence…
BEIJING, CHINA : Pakistan, Russia and Kazakhstan are regarded as “highly” cooperative countries in advancing China’s connectivity plan, through road, raid, and air and sea links. The three countries occupy prominent position in a list of 64 countries and regions cooperating with China in it’s Belt and Road Initiative. In an official report released here, the Chinese government particularly eulogized the performance of Pakistan towards the Belt and Road initiative, in the background of China-Pakistan…
A deputy director of the Communist Party’s Central National Security Commission was appointed as the acting mayor of Beijing on Monday, according to mainland media reports. The appointment of Cai Qi was announced by Beijing party chief Guo Jinlong, Beijing Daily reported, confirming a South China Morning Post report about Cai’s move on Sunday. “Cai has strong political sensitivity and is loyal to the party,” Guo was quoted as saying. Guo praised Cai for having…
The Communist Party could be willing to bend unofficial age limits for the country’s most powerful political body, according to one of the men behind a key party statement released last week. Analysts said the comments by Deng Maosheng, who helped draft the communique for the Central Committee’s sixth plenum, were strong signals that the party’s top graft-buster could retain his seat on the Politburo Standing Committee next year. Five of the seven Standing Committee…
China’s top legislature on Monday started its bimonthly session to review draft laws, amendments and bills, including a draft law on cybersecurity, a draft law on nuclear safety and an amendment to the surveying and mapping law. Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presided over the opening meeting. The draft cybersecurity law, tabled for a third reading, allows police and other law enforcers to take measures, including the freezing of…
The writer is an analyst and commentator. Just looking at the tone and tenor of the political discourse in our country, one gets the sense that India is a very lucky ducky. It isn’t every day that one is gifted an adversary too busy eating itself to take advantage of an existential weakness. Whilst innocent Kashmiris in Srinagar and across the valley suffer the indignity of an occupation whose brutality blows hot and cold, India’s…
States have secrets and those secrets must be protected. There is nothing unusual or embarrassing about that. There is a certain global protocol that is practised when it comes to dissemination of certain classified information or its reportage. Notwithstanding the ‘importance’ of the agenda of a meeting, it is the prerogative of any party present in that meeting to decide whether its proceedings or details be kept a secret or made public through media. All…