Pakistan’s finance committee kept alive a proposal to give Pakistan International Airlines a 15-year sales tax exemption on imported or leased aircraft, engines and parts, but it did not close the file at this sitting. The measure sits inside the carrier’s privatization package, where tax relief is being used to sharpen the bid economics and support fleet renewal without loading new deliveries and spares with transaction taxes.
The dispute is less about aviation need than market design. Lawmakers are weighing whether relief should stay exclusive to PIA or be extended across the sector to avoid distortions for other operators. That decision now drives the next phase of the Finance Bill.