Who decides?

Daily Times, May 7, 2006
Gift of Mushak planes to Arab states questioned

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s decision to give 34 Mushak aircraft worth millions of dollars as ‘gifts’ to three Muslim countries was questioned in the meeting of the National Assembly’ Public Accounts Committee (PAC) last week. The PAC was also told that Pakistan had suffered major losses in the sale of 25 Mushak aircraft to Iran when General Aslam Beg was army chief in 1989. Pakistan gifted 20 Mushak aircraft – manufactured at the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC) Kamra – to Saudi Arabia, eight to Oman and six to Syria, Air Marshal Khalid Chaudhry, recently appointed head of the PAC Kamra, told the committee. The PAC was meeting to review defence related spending after the auditor general of Pakistan submitted details of the losses suffered on account of the 1989 deal with Iran to the committee. According to the official record of the meeting, committee Chairman Riaz Fatiyana was at a loss to understand why the PAC Kamra, a commercial organisation funded from taxpayers’ money, was giving these aircraft away as gifts. “Are you gifting all these locally manufactured aircraft to foreign countries or earning some thing out of their sale as well?” Fatiyana asked Air Marshal Chaudhry. Chaudhry replied that Pakistan had recently sold Mushak aircraft to South Africa at a profit of $15,000 per plane. The PAC Kamra has also sold 55 Mushak aircraft to the Pakistan Navy and 125 to the Pakistan Army. maryam hussain