The Czech government has asked the management of the Liberty Steel company to pay the money owed to the local subsidiary of the steel group, as a way to resume production at the steel mill in Ostrava and satisfy the employees and creditors, Bloomberg media group reported, taken by Agerpres.
The owner of Liberty Steel, Sanjeev Gupta, must repay around 400 million euros that his companies abroad owe to the Ostrava factory. Czech Industry Minister Jozef Sikela said he had a discussion with the Indian tycoon but did not get a response about plans for the plant in the Czech Republic, where operations are halted and most of the roughly 5,000 employees are out of work. technical. Czech officials stepped up pressure on Gupta after a court ruling granted him protection from creditors until June. The Ostrava steelworks has debts to dozens of suppliers and local partners, and the Czech state is one of the important creditors.
In this context, a spokesman for Liberty Steel Group stated that the problems at the Czech plant will not affect the steel plant in Galati, where “production is accelerating”: “The situation at Liberty Ostrava has no impact on Liberty’s operations Galați. Unlike the Czech company, it benefited from constant support from the Romanian Government. This support allowed the company to accelerate production, reaching volumes of over 136,000 tons of steel and 133,000 tons of slabs produced in the month March”.
