"We have held extensive deliberations on possible options to restart PSM during our two-day parley which will be submitted before the Board next week," said Raziuddin while talking to Business Recorder. The committee discussed offers from various parties desiring to participate in rehabilitation of PSM.
The committee appreciated the political philosophy of the present government towards the need of re-operationalisation of PSM, considering PSM the only primary steel manufacturing plant in the country, which has national strategic value and its operationalisation will help contribute to the Large-Scale Manufacturing growth number, besides serving the need of downstream industry.
The committee discussed various options to restart PSM, which have higher probability of financial sustainability, least cost and early restart while keeping the present human resource intact.
The committee observed that the blast furnaces have been adversely damaged primarily due to abrupt closure of supply of natural gas in 2015. Due to this, it is estimated that the major capital repairs including replacement of two blast furnaces is the major cost component of repairs and replacement of plants and equipment of PSM.
The committee extensively discussed the repairs required for each and every unit of the PSM for production restoring to 1 million tonnes per year and extending it to 3 million tonnes as per demand in the country in view of increasing demand of steel in the country.
The committee while extensively discussing the required needs for the rehabilitation of the plant for bringing it back to the initial production capacity of the mill considered various options of resources for consideration of ECC.
The committee also discussed hiring of CEO and CFO on urgent basis which is expected to be considered by the Board again as in the previous meeting Board members were reluctant to recommend any such proposal fearing that NAB can summon them any time if the new CEO commits any wrongdoing.
