January 26, 2002	Saturday	Ziqa’ad 11, 1422

LAHORE, Jan 25: The Revival Committee for Sick Units has so far revived 119 sick units with total outstanding loan of Rs16 billion against them, saving about 37,000 jobs.

This was stated by revival committee chairman Tariq Hamid at a press conference here on Friday. He was accompanied by new chief executive of Corporate Industrial Restructuring Corporation Javed Hamid.

“We’ve given a new lease of life to these industries, one-fourth of which were closed while others were semi-operational,” Tariq Hamid said.

The revived units included 27 textile spinning, 11 weaving, 12 sugar and five knitting units. All the units have been revived in the “hands of their existing management”.

The committee has reviewed the cases of 264 sick units with an outstanding (default) amount of Rs35.10 billion for revival since May 2000, rejecting the restructuring pleas of 145 industries. It is estimated that about 50,000 jobs have been lost due to closure of the industries whose pleas for revival through rescheduling of their outstanding loans of Rs19 billion have been turned down.

“These units face liquidation or a change of management either through the Corporate Industrial Restructuring Corporation (CIRC) or lending banks themselves,” Tariq told a questioner.

He said the “CIRC would handle cases of only those units which are defaulters of the government-owned banks.”

The revival committee accepts for review only those cases that involve default amount of Rs10 million and above. Hamid said only “genuine requests had been accepted by the committee for revival” and no wilful defaulter was given a fresh chance.

Hamid said the committee would meet to review revival pleas of another 13 units on Feb 4 in Lahore. He said the committee may be holding a meeting in Peshawar in February or March to exclusively review the cases of sick industries from the NWFP.

CIRC: The Corporate Industrial Restructuring Corporation (CIRC) has sold 31 sick units for Rs412 million in the last nine months, the new CIRC chief executive Javed Hamid said.

Of all the units sold by the CIRC so far, 20 were located in Punjab, nine in Sindh and one each in Balochistan and the NWFP. Some 4,500 jobs would be created with the revival of these units.

The outgoing chief executive of the CIRC, Tariq Hamid, said the total number of units sold by the corporation would rise to 32 if the sale of Zark Textile Mill in Karachi for Rs275 million was also included. He said the Zark Textile Mill was not included in the list of the sold units because its sale was yet to be confirmed by the court.

Hamid said the CIRC had put up 47 units for open auction since May last year out of 208 sick industries whose bad loans of Rs21 billion have been assumed by the corporation.

All the loans pertain to six government-owned banks and non- banking financial institutions, including UBL and NDFC. The CIRC was formed in 2000 to take over the bad loans of the nationalized banks and FDIs to “clean” their balance sheets and prepare them for privatization. It has to sell all sick units handed over to it by the banks and the FDIs in six years from its formation.

Hamid said out of 208 units taken over by the CIRC, 41 did not “actually” exist. The market value of another 35 units is being determined.

He said most industries had fallen “sick due to overinvoicing, sudden tariff changes, inconsistent government policies, lack of working capital and other factors.”

Javed Hamid said the CIRC would try to put up at least 10 units for sale every month from now on (to speed up their disposal).