Pakistan Steel Mills

Pakistan Steel Mills (Urdu: پاکستان اسٹيل ملز; reporting name: PSM), is a global competitive, multi-billion state-owned megacorporation and the producer of the long rolled steel and heavy metal products and entities in the country.

Headquartered in Karachi, Sindh Province of Pakistan, the PSM is the current largest industrial megacorporation undertaking having a production capacity of 1.1—5.0 million tonnes of steel and iron foundries. Built with the contributions of the Soviet Union in 1970s, it is the largest industrial megacorporation complex, vastly expanded in an enormous dimensions construction inputs, involving the use of 1.29Mn cubic meters of concrete; 5.70Mn cubic meters of earth work; and contains ~330,000 tonnes of heavy machinery, steel structures and electrical equipments.

A controversial attempt was made to privatize the steel mills to global private ownership under a counter-measure Privatization Programme of Prime minister Shaukat Aziz. All attempts were thwarted by the Supreme Court which launched a full-fledged investigation against the attempts to privatize as private sector too lost the control of the steel mills in matter of weeks. In spite of its enormous size and expansion, only 18% of the capacity was in use and the steel mills requested a bailout plan of Rs.12 billion to prevent its closure; the bail out plan was dismissed by the government. Finally, the steel mills was brought back to government-ownership management under an inverse counter-measure Nationalization Programme of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani and since then, its operational plant capacity has been reached to 30%—50% after seeking the government financial assistance.