January 31, 2002	Thursday	Ziqa’ad 16, 1422

LAHORE, Jan 30: The Revival Committee for Sick Units will meet here on Monday to consider the revival pleas of 13 more sick units and decide their fate.

After the disposal of their cases, the committee will not have any fresh case for consideration. However, it intends to hold its meeting in Peshawar in March or April to exclusively consider the cases of the sick units from the NWFP.

Chairman of the committee, Tariq Hamid, who is also finance minister of Punjab, has already spoken to his counterpart from NWFP and asked him to gather data on sick units, whose owners are interested in the revival of their industries.

Of 264 sick units with total default amount of Rs35.1 billion, whose cases were referred to the committee since its constitution in the year 2000, the committee has restructured the loans of some 119 units, giving a new lease of life to them. The amount of the loan outstanding against the revived units was Rs16 billion.

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”. Though no fresh default case against any of the revived units has so far been reported to the committee, it is being feared that “some sugar mills may find it difficult to service their loan owing to recent crisis in the industry triggered by the huge import of the commodity from India last year.

Tariq Hamid says majority of the 145 industries, that belong to one of six government-owned banking and non-banking financial institutions and whose revival pleas had been rejected, will be handed over to the CIRC for their disposal.