PSM asks govt to exclude businessmen from group

Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) Board has reportedly asked Ministry of Industries and Production ( MoI&P) to remove the name of those members from the experts group who run their own steel business, well- sources said.

The Board took this decision in its meeting held January 21, 2019 under the chairmanship of Engineer Abdul Jabbar Memon, who is against privatisation of PSM.

The Experts Group headed by CEO Hubco, Khalid Mansoor, is preparing future plan for PSM to be submitted to the federal cabinet for further action. Chairman PSM briefed the Board of the decision of the government to operationalise PSM by delisting it from the active list of privatization.

Giving an overview of the directives of previous Board meeting on the formulation of the way forward, he stated that the Board has already directed PSM management to prepare a working paper to propose viable options for operationalisation of PSM. On the directives of the Board, PSM management was already preparing a presentable paper on future plan/way forward strategy for re-operationalisation of PSM.

In view of significance of the matter, a meeting of Business Development Committee ( BDC) was also convened on 16 and 17 January 2019 to discuss options to be proposed to the Government for putting the plant back into operation with existing production capacity of 1.1 million tons per annum and its further expansion up to 3 million ton/annum.

The BDC in its meeting discussed various options for re-operationalisation of PSM which have higher probability of financial sustainability, least cost, and early restart while keeping the present Human Resource base intact. The committee held extensive deliberations on the working paper prepared by PSM management and felt that the comparison of Sino Steel report and PSM’s analysis on Sino Steel’s report needs further improvement as abrupt shutdown of natural gas supply in 2015 had adversely affected the plant’s machinery. Due to this, it was perceived that the capital repairs/replacement of plants and equipment of PSM would be the major cost component in the revival plan of PSM. The committee directed the PSM management to update estimated rates for repairs/replacement of PSM’s plants and machinery. In this regard, the committee directed all the Directorate Incharges to furnish the requisite and relevant information to give final shape to proposals to be putup to the Government for rehabilitation of the plant to bring it back to initial production capacity of the mill.

After detailed discussion, the Board directed PSM management to continue working to determine viable options for re-operationalisation of PSM..