ABS & Co was engaged by the Punjab Cattle Market Management & Development Company (PCMMDC) to lead its ambitious digital reform agenda. At the heart of this transformation was the development of the first-of-its-kind E-Auction Policy, which revolutionized the way collection rights for cattle markets across Punjab are auctioned.
PCMMDC is a public sector company empowered to establish, organize, manage, operate and regulate cattle markets across the province, which form a critical part of Punjab’s economy. A core function of PCMMDC is the outsourcing of collection rights for cattle markets to contractors through a competitive auction process, which has traditionally been conducted through manual, on-site bidding. These auctions constitute a major revenue stream for the company, with contracts for leading cattle markets historically awarded for amounts running into hundreds of millions of rupees.
Recognizing the risks of opacity, procedural irregularities, and potential revenue leakage in conventional auctions, PCMMDC embarked on an ambitious reform initiative to digitize and standardize the entire auction process across all of its cattle markets in collaboration with the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB). ABS & Co played a central role by drafting an E-Auction Policy, which set out the procedural, legal, and technological framework for conducting competitive electronic auctions.
The policy introduced standardized eligibility criteria, bidding rules, disqualification thresholds, compliance obligations and dispute resolution mechanisms to ensure that auctions were conducted in a fair, competitive and transparent manner. When implemented across 112 cattle markets in Punjab, the e-auction system generated PKR 15.35 billion in revenue, demonstrating the success of both the E-Auction Policy and the digital transformation initiative.
This mandate highlights ABS & Co’s expertise in developing innovative legal solutions that enable digital transformation in key sectors of Pakistan’s economy. The ABS & Co. team working on this assignment included Ahmed Reza Mirza and Khadeeja Ahmad.
