ISLAMABAD – Pakistan has planned to sell its defunct steel mills in early next year as it has received encouraging responses from companies including Chinese and Russian.
This was revealed by Federal Minister for Privatization Muhammad Mian Soomro in an interview with Bloomberg following the conclusion of a series of roadshows with international and national investors for the revival of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM).
PSM is non-functional since 2015, and the government has come up with a unique and most feasible transaction structure for the revival of Pakistan Steel Mills, the 51% to 74% shares of a newly carved out subsidiary of PSM namely Steel Corp would be divested through a competitive and transparent bidding process.
Soomro said that longstanding differences between the federal and provincial governments have also be resolved, adding that the land of the steel mills will be given in a lease as part of the transaction.
The PTI-led government aims at selling all closed and loss-making units to control widening losses and generate revenue in order to secure a $6 billion loan program with the International Monetary Fund
The steel mills is among the largest loss-making state-owned units that costs $100 million in year to the national kitty.
The government is also looking to expedite the privatization in the remaining two years of the its tenure that will end in 2023.
“Privatization is important, thing is to keep losses low and bring in good management,” Soomro told the international media outlet.
PSM is the only fully integrated steel complex in the country that produced a fifth of all production capacity of Pakistan. Officials said that the production capacity could be increased three times.
Soomro called the PSM viable since country has to import steel due to shortage.
Read more: https://pakobserver.net/roadshow-for-psm-starts-in-islamabad/
