ISLAMABAD: Privatisation policy had another impact on Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) which continues to lose its land — this time to an industrial park to be set up under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
According to PM's decree, the approved allocation of 1,500 acres of PSM land for the industrial park. According to officials who gave interview to local media sources: The prime minister has “desired that it (matter) may be taken up with the Privatisation Commission and Board of Directors of PSM,” said an order issued by the industries and production ministry. The PSM board has been incomplete and without a chairman since the PML-N came to power in 2013.
Due to incompletion, neither the PSM board nor its parent industries and production ministry has so far proposed privatisation of the country’s largest industrial unit, where after 2007 the situation worsened, with massive fall it from a profit of Rs10.4 billion on June 30, 2008, to a loss of Rs26bn on June 30, 2009.
In a bid to restructure the body constitutents, the PML-N dissolved the PSM board and endeavored to reconfigure and revive the mill for total privatisation. Despite Finance Minister Ishaq Dar's undertaking to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Aug 19, 2013 on the premise that the government would appoint a professional board immediately with inductions from the private sector; it never was implemented and the total losses and liabilities stood at Rs415bn by December in the previous year.
Another 157 acres of land initially to be used for handling imported coal for the Sahiwal power project, was recently leased out to the Port Qasim Authority for Rs9.3 million per acre, even though the Privatisation Commission had estimated the rate at Rs30m per acre.
Dissatisfied with the FIA investigation in this matter, the SC transferred the case to the National Accountability Bureau in May 2012 with a deadline to complete the probe in three months, but its progress is still unclear and incomplete.
