The Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Pakistan Steel, Imtiaz Ahmed Lodhi, has said that with the efforts of the corporation's employees, its losses had been cut by 50 percent, to Rs 13 billion, in the fiscal year 2009-10, against Rs 26 billion the Mills faced in fiscal year 2008-09.
Addressing a press conference at Karachi Press Club on Tuesday, he said that the management is making all efforts to make it a profitable institution. "Once mills starts utilising 60 percent of installed capacity, it would come out of losses and start earning profits," he said, added that "we have set target to carry our production level to 50-55 percent by the end of October, from present 40 percent".
He said that several corrupt mafias are working in Pakistan Steel Mills, and employees of the corporation are also involved in stealing of products. He said that the present management of the corporation is trying its best to remove the culture of corruption in the mills, but it will not happen overnight.
Lohdi said that some major replacements have also been made in the Steel Mills and some doubtful officials have been replaced with responsible ones, beside deployment of 10 private security personnel. He said that the process of privatisation has also been initiated and a few months ago Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh was advocating Pakistan Steel's sell-off in its bad financial condition. "However, we argued that fixation of flaws was the first step, and then one could opt for its privatisation," he added.
He said that after fixation of flaws, the government might privatise Pakistan Steel on the pattern on which banks were sold off to the private sector, or government may opt, at the first stage, to sell its shares to the public through stock s market. About valuation of the plant and its property he said that at present, overall evaluation of Pakistan Steel's assets is being done and is likely to be completed by October-end. "As per my own careful assessment, the worth of Pakistan Steel's assets, including its land, plants and machinery is worth of Rs 100-125 billion.
He said that recently, Pakistan Steel's board of director has been reconstituted in compliance with the directive issued by the federal government for reconstituting boards of eight huge loss making public entities and new board of Pakistan Steel is having directors from the private sector.
On the other side, Pakistan Steel is also searching for professional Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Managing Director, for which an advertisement would be given in print media to invite applications for the slot of CEO very soon, Lohdi said.
To reduce corruption and enhance transparency the Pakistan Steel has also signed an agreement with the Transparency International Pakistan (TIP), according to which TIP will monitor Corporation's procurement and sale procedures. He said that the Pakistan Steel is aggressively utilising locally produced raw material from Balochistan, "and we are planning to use 100 percent locally extracted raw material by the end of 2012". Pakistan Steel is also working on expansion plan and it is part of the talks, which the county's high level delegation discussed with Moscow authority at its visit very recently, he added.