Pakistan Steel Mills lost more than Rs79 billion over three fiscal years while remaining shut (Express Tribune).
The composition
| | | |—|—| | Total losses, FY24 to FY26 | Rs79bn+ | | — interest on past loans | Rs57.4bn | | Losses in the last fiscal year alone | Rs24bn | | Salaries paid over the three years | Rs3.9bn (down 50pc in FY26) | | Fuel, electricity, water and gas | Rs9.1bn (down a third in FY26) |
How long it has been closed
Since June 2015 — more than eleven years.
What the figures actually describe
Not a failing business. A closed one that continues to cost money.
Rs57.4 billion of the Rs79 billion is interest on loans taken before the plant stopped producing. That is the largest single line, and it will accrue whether or not anyone ever restarts the mill, because it is a debt rather than an operating cost.
The Rs9.1 billion spent on fuel, electricity, water and gas at a facility producing nothing is the line that ought to be easiest to explain, and no explanation has been published.
The scale, for comparison
Rs79 billion is roughly the Rs75 billion the government has committed to three months of fuel relief for motorcyclists and small-car owners — a package Jamaat-i-Islami is marching against as inadequate.
One is a policy choice made this month. The other is the cost of eleven years of not deciding what to do with a steel mill.
What is recommended
The Central Monitoring Unit warns that without reform of subsidy governance, debt management and operational modernisation, Pakistan’s trading state-owned enterprises and PSM will remain persistent fiscal liabilities.
That is the standard formulation, and it has been the standard formulation for a decade.
What is not established
No decision on privatisation, revival or liquidation has been announced. No figure has been published for the current headcount, and no named official is quoted in the reporting.
[Image: File photo via The Express Tribune]
