For the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, New York, which is operated by Pakistan International Airlines Investment Limited (PIAIL), a hotel industry magazine published on Friday, Pakistan is considering injecting $35.58 million as a second bailout package.
The Hotel Management, a magazine that began in New York in 1922, also announced that the cabinet’s Pakistan Economic Coordination Committee had debated setting up a panel to provide the property with this rescue package.
According to the paper, the panel approved $142m in September 2020 to meet the hotel’s immediate financial needs. This sum was structured as a loan with an annual mark-up of $5.9m from the National Bank of Pakistan.
In addition, it accepted $13m as an annual carrying cost before a lease agreement with a joint venture partner is concluded.
The study noted that PIAIL faced losing the Manhattan property as well as the Scribe Hotel in Paris in 2019 after an international arbitration ruling was imposed by a British Islands court involving the sale of the two assets to Tethyan Copper Company (TCC) as a settlement for the cancellation of its mining license in Balochistan.
The British Virgin Islands are part of PIAIL, a subsidiary of Pakistan International Airlines. TCC is a joint venture owned by Antofagasta and Barrick Gold.
TCC’s mining licenses for Reko Diq gold and copper mines in Balochistan were cancelled by Pakistan, citing irregularities, while TCC alleged that they were wrongly prevented from carrying out mining operations.
There are 1,015 rooms and 52 suites in the hotel, which opened in 1924. Other media reports say that in the United States and France, Pakistan also risks losing these important real estate assets.
In 2019, over this dispute, the International Centre for Investment Dispute Resolution, a quasi-court of the World Bank, placed a hefty $5.97 billion fine on Pakistan in 2019. Pakistan was pursuing an out-of-court settlement with the TCC at one point.
