A meeting was held under the Chairmanship of Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani at the PM House yesterday in which the Ministry of Production gave briefing on the Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) revival plan on a sustainable basis.
The Prime Minister called upon the stakeholders to encourage the search for collaboration with partners including Russian Government’s offer made by the Russian Prime Minister Putin during Pakistan’s Prime Minister recent visit to the country to attend SCO Summit in Saint Petersburg. He was briefed on efforts of CCOR to undertake reforms and restructuring in PSM including commercial and business preferences in the aftermath of losses incurred during 2008-09.
Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani directed the Cabinet Committee on Restructuring (CCOR) to immediately recommend names of candidates for appointment as Chief Executive Officer to operationalise business plan of the Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM). He said the CCOR was with holding name of short listed candidates forwarded to it by the PSM board a few weeks back. The source said former managing director of Sui Southern Gas Company Limited Faizullah Abassi is most likely to be appointed CEO of PSM, as he fulfills required criteria for the post. He holds a PhD in Metallurgy. The source said appointment of CEO is required to move forward the revival of steel mills. Government has recently approved providing sovereign guarantee to banks for providing Rs6 billion to PSM. The financial injection will help keep the company operational, the source said adding that the one ship load of raw material was being imported with plans to import two more in coming months. Approval of the financial package will allow complete revival of the company in next few months. PSM was operating profitably till 2002-2008 period but has incurred massive losses for the last four years. The meeting was informed that CCOR had adopted a series of measures to ensure that PSM begins to achieve recovery and financial rehabilitation. These measures included reconstitution of Board of Directors with professionals, separation of the post of chairman and CEO and appointment of the chairman from the independent board members. The short listing of CEO, preparation of Business Plan by PSM, and other measures to identify international collaboration and basic capital required for achieving higher rate of capacity utilisation of the Mills were discussed. The meeting was attended by the Minister for Finance, Minister for Production, Secretary Production, Secretary Privatization and other senior officials of the relevant Ministries.
High time he did that.
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