Parliamentary Secretary for Industries and Production Rao Muhammad Ajmal Khan said on Wednesday that the establishment of an Export Processing Zone (EPZ) at Gwadar was at preliminary planning stage and 1,000 acres of land had been leased by the government of Balochistan in 2006 for the project.
He was responding to a question asked by Shahida Rehmani regarding EPZ Gwadar and said that the PC-II for appointment of consultant had been approved while the EPZA had advertised notice for appointment of consultant for planning and designing of Gwadar EPZ.
Answering another question, he said due to energy crisis the industries were facing power shortage and efforts were going on to overcome the problem. Regarding Pakistan Steel Mill (PSM), he said, during the last two years the PSM had suffered losses due to interrupted supply chain of raw material and insufficient funds resultantly caused low production.
He said the federal government had written a letter to the Sindh government for taking charge of the mill but the provincial government had not replayed yet, adding that Rs 50,500 million losses had been recorded during the two years. Rao Ajmal said due to losses sustained by the corporation and severe financial crises, the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of Cabinet in its meeting held in 2014 approved the summary submitted by the Privatization Commission of Pakistan on ‘restructuring option of PSM’. He said the mill took 45 days to start but due to insufficient gas supply it was not working.
