I think when I last enquired from a local steel exporter to Pak ( many a moons ago) he quoted 2 billion US$ for a small plant. We cannot do with another big venture like PSM. However smaller units producing specialized steel is doable with Government help. However anything in the hands of Govtt is asking to be a disaster hence the suggestion for private venture. We might be able to get a second hand steel plant from EU as quite a few have shut down but a concerted effort needs to be made.
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IMO specialized steel units will have the highest chance of emerging from the PA, PAF or PN. In this case, you have actual needs - not just in terms of the equipment that'll use steel, but an incentive to lower long-term costs (by reducing imports) - and relative security from corruption and mismanagement. However, the risk (or trade off to be more apt) is that progression will entirely be tied to armed forces needs, so they could stick to basically producing the same kind of steel for decades before shifting (and might stifle out R&D in progression).
On compromise would be for joint-public and private ownership split between a private sector company and NESCOM, PAC, etc. In this case, the public-side of the management will be from the armed forces (better than civilian). The advantage is that the steel unit will have relative autonomy to conduct R&D and change its product line independently while still keeping a % (e.g. 30-40%) out of the output geared towards domestic needs. They can gear the remaining 60% to export, and NESCOM/PAC/KSEW, etc will be ok with it because as equity owners they'll get a return-on-investment.
Guys unfortunately it can't work in a sustainable way like this ... Actually this is a complete industrial chain and the specialized steel we are talking about is downstream industry of the chain ...
Now all these has to be integrated otherwise it will not be a sustainable business... For example in pakistan , Pakistan Steel Mill was the only organization that was manufacturing iron and steel ...
Basically they were extracting iron from iron ore and as a result they were the first organization in the supply chain, my father and his brother dedicated whole life to the industry and i grew up in residential sociert established for the employees of Pakistan Steel Mill therefore I understand it from scratch ...
Now loosing this capability means the other steel manufacturers (which are downstream manufacturers) are suffering from market factors such as dollar rate, international prices and availability ...
Now the challenge i big players (which are fully integrated) are charging extra margins for the semi-finished iron and steel product so that other smaller players that are working on a part of supply chain cannot survive ...
You can take example of Aisha Steel, for example, they are purchasing iron bars to be converted into steel bars, their raw material in international market is expensive (in comparision to what they could get from an efficiently working Pakistan Steel) and as a result their final product is expensive in comparision to the one available in international market ...
Suggestions that PAF and PN raised the demand of specialized steel is not possible as steel based industries can run only with a minimum capacity ... if they work below a certain capacity they can never work so generally these downstream industries have multiple products or you can say multiple grade steel so that they can achieve minimum capacity however PN, PAF and Army cannot generate enough demand to reach the minimum capacity ... As a result private sector is not willing to take further risk after closure of Pakistan Steel Mill ...
THere is a reason that specialized steel as demanded by the military are being produced in government-owned institutes such as people steel mills as they are all in losses ...
FOr these huge sectors, there is no shortcut and government need to intervene and start building this sector from scratch ... Pakistan Steel Mill is the first step as this will provide raw iron and raw steel for value added product at sustainable price ...
