ISLAMABAD: Senate Standing Committee on Industries has discussed privatisation of the Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) and Pakistan Machine Tool Factory.
The members of the committee said that the employees are suffering due to the non-payment of salaries and the suspension is also causing huge losses to the national exchequer.
The PSM administration informed the committee that on June 15, 2015, Sui Southern Gas Company discontinued the natural gas supply, due to non payments. “But despite their repeated attempts the gas supply could not be restored,” the PSM officials added.
Privatisation Commission Head Muhammad Zubair said that privatisation of the mills would save the country further losses, and would be equally beneficial for the staff as well as the country.
He said Rs 18.5 billion bailout package was spent on the purchase of raw material, payment of the utility bills and salaries, adding, “The only objective is to improve conditions of the mills before its sale.”
Senator Taj Haider said that the import mafia was behind the demise of PSM. He said due to interference by the mafia, the mill was out of production. He added the government was not ready to provide production tariff, and that mill’s production could be revived to 3 million tonnes by determining the gas surcharges.
The PSM chairman informed the body that in 2008, PSM suffered a loss of Rs 26 billion, but the government released only Rs 10 billion to the mills against the requested Rs 20 billion. He lamented that since then the mills could not be pulled out of the financial crunch.
Discussing the losses of Pakistan Machine Tool Factory, the committee was told that it had been in loss since 2002-03, and that the cabinet committee in 2013 decided to privatise it, but the Ministry of Defence Production opposed it.
