(November 18, 2019)
President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum (PBIF), President All Karachi Industrial Alliance (AKIA), Senior Vice Chairman of the Businessmen Panel of FPCCI and former provincial minister, Mian Zahid Hussain on Monday said Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) is inflicting loss of over sixty million per day.
More funds should not be wasted to revive this sick unit and it should be handed over to Russians or included in the CPEC, he said.
Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader PSM is draining public exchequer by Rs 2 billion monthly while its losses have swelled from Rs460 billion to Rs510 billion during the current government.
The former minister noted that the chairman of the institution still want to revive it and start production of 1.1 million tonnes which he plans to boost to 3.3 million tonnes which seems like a pipe dream.
The post of CEO of PSM is lying vacant since January 2013, it has no financial advisor, therefore, time and money should not be spent on this dead project, he added.
He said that those who have the ability to run this institution are not getting the opportunity to fix things while an influential mafia is interested in keeping it closed, therefore, it is not working since June 2015.
Closure of PSM has resulted in losses of eleven billion dollars which continue which has transformed this profitable institution into a burden.
He noted that audit of PSM has not been conducted since years while corruption and nepotism rules in it which is in the interest of some influential.
PSM remained profitable from 2000 to 2008 after which it was plundered mercilessly and not a single government took a genuine interest in energizing it, however, the PSM stakeholders group claims that if the tariff is rationalized, this institution can swing to profit and help generate Rs100 billion in revenue.
