Dozens of companies mostly foreign have expressed their interest in operating the Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM).

“Now we have 17 companies who are interested in running it [PSM],” Aliya Hamza Malik, parliamentary secretary for textile, commerce, industries and production, quoted Arab News. “There are some Russian companies, Chinese companies … some of them have visited Pakistan Steel Mills as well and everything will be done in a transparent manner.”

As per the report, six Russian firms including the METPROM Group, three Chinese companies including the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC), four Ukrainian firms one American company, and three Pakistani firms have expressed interest in running PSM.

The official informed that the government does not intend to privatize PSM completely.

“We are not going to privatize it completely, we will run it on a public private partnership [basis] with the major share of the Pakistan government,” Malik said. “We are going to run it at full capacity and when it will run on full capacity more employment will be generated ... we will be able to fulfill our requirement as well as we will be able to export steel.”

Days ago, the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf's (PTI's) announced that over 4,500 employees of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) were being terminated with severance pay of an average Rs 2.3 million each. It also intends to divert its 1,900 acres of land to other uses such as real estate development. Federal Minister Hammad Azhar has already indicated that 1,300 of these 1,900 acres would be leased out.