KARACHI: Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) on Thursday received fifth installment of Rs1.750 billion under the restructuring package.

This amount will help in clearing employees’ salary of 45 days by next week (half of July and full salary of August), said spokesman of PSM Shazim Akhtar.

With this instalment, the mills has so far received Rs13.52bn out of approved Rs18.5bn financial restructuring package.

When asked that PSM had failed to achieve 30 per cent production in the current month, he said the average production has reached 25 per cent till September 20, 2014 from three per cent in May, 2014 and six per cent in whole of 2013-14. With the help of the recent financial restructuring package and streamlining of supply chain of raw material the production capacity would touch around 30 per cent by next week, he added. Raw material position is quite satisfactory as the mill has 112,000 tonnes of iron ore (lump and fine) and 160,000 tonnes of imported coal, he said.

The mills management will enhance the production capacity to 40-50 per cent next month and 77 per cent by January 2015 depending on availability of raw material and financial facility, he said.

Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2014