A Group of Ministers on public sector Steel Authority of India Limited will meet on Friday to review its performance and restructuring.

The performance of the company, which is expected to break even in the first quarter of next fiscal has been under constant government scan with even the Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee wanting state-owned companies to emulate private sector companies like Tata Iron and Steel.

Ahead of this meeting, SAIL top brass including its chairman V S Jain and chief executives of its four plants metin Ranchi earlier this month to outline the strategy for the next financial year including achieving a 6-7 per cent growthin production during the year to break-even next financial year on full year basis.

The strategy includes targets such as an increase in production, cost cutting, reorienting of product mix andtime-bound implementation of projects for which all the four main plants have been given growth targets in saleable steel.

SAIL management is also targeting improvement in techno-economic parameters like coke rate, energy consumption, metallic input, refractory consumption as also reduction in consumption of power.

The company has also formulated a multi-pronged programme to bring down the consumption of power, which includes optimum running of instruments and improvement in captive power generation.

The management has also stressed on importance of reorienting the product mix of the company for next year to suit market requirements, so that whatever is produced gets sold.

To improve performance both in terms of quality and volume, thrust will also be given on time-bound implementationof certain projects like modernisation of reheating furnace of Bokaro, Bhilai rail mill.