Govt plans to activate $1.5 billion uplift fund

The caretaker government plans to get going Pakistan Development Fund Ltd (PDFL) — a $1.5 billion state-owned shell entity — to provide an alternative financing source to public sector development projects through divestment of government stakes in public sector and public-private partnerships (PPP). The entity was created in June 2014 with inflows of $1.5bn financial support from Saudi Arabia amid then prevailing foreign exchange challenges but remained almost in the cold storage of the Ministry of Finance for almost a decade now as most of the time its board of directors comprised ex-officio members. The foreign funds so received were claimed to have been used for setting up of two LNG-based power plants — Balloki and Haveli Bahadur Shah — of over 1,220MW through National Power Parks Management Company Ltd (NPPCL) — a subsidiary of the Power Division.