Pasar to spend P1-B this yr feaor maintenance, modernization

About P1 billion or $20 million will be spent by the Philippine Associated Smelting and Refining Corp. (PASAR) this year for the maintenance and modernization of its plant in Isabel, Leyte.

According to PASAR vice chairman and treasurer Jose Leviste: Jr., PASAR will have to temporarily shut down its smelting line and refinery located within the 180-hectare Leyte Industrial Development Estate.

PASAR’s plant has an existing capacity of 170,000 metric tons a year. It imports copper concentrates from Chile, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

About 90 percent of the plant’s output is earmarked for export to China, Korea Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia.

PASAR was one of 10 industrial projects pursued by former Trade and Industry Secretary Roberto V. Ongpin to make the Philippines a truly industrialized country.

Unfortunately, low copper prices in the 1980s resulted in heavy losses for PASAR, forcing the government to privatize it.

PASAR was successfully acquired by Copper Smelting Investments, Ltd., a consortium of investors represented by former Agriculture Secretary Carlos Dominguez. Among the investors was the Swiss-based Glencore International AG.

The consortium paid government P3.2 billion to acquire PASAR from the government in 1999.

The consortium had then boasted that it would be able to increase PASAR’s capacity to 240,000 metric tons a year. – Marianne Go