All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) has said that country's present economic situation is miserable and the only answer is to increase our exports to stable the depressed economic situation, adding that textile industry is capable enough to double its exports in the next five years
Chairman APTMA Sindh-Balochistan Region Zahid Mazhar said that for achieving this issue to meet the threat of increased competition in the global textile market must be addressed without any further delay, he added. He said that first 100 days of the PTI government has already been lapsed. The government is yet to adopt measures to reverse the trend.
"Drastic situation requires drastic measures and APTMA is of the view that if the corrective measures are not taken immediately in next 30 days the economic situation of the country will become from bad to worst", he said. While highlighting the issues hurting the viability of textile industry of Pakistan to compete with its regional competitors, Zahid Mazhar said that some of the major issues are high cost of doing business, inordinate delay in payment of refunds of sales tax, income tax and duty drawback to exporters, highest policy rate in the region, shortage of basic raw material, i.e, cotton for meeting consumption requirement of the industry at competitive prices.
He said that the increase in the cost of doing business cannot be passed on to the international buyers which is resulting in de-industrialization and decline in Pakistan's share in global textile trade. In contrast, the share of our regional competitors like Bangladesh, India and Vietnam is rising by leaps and bounds.
He urged the government to give immediate attention to the cotton crop which has witnessed a massive decline over the last few years. He reminded that four years ago Pakistan had achieved the highest cotton crop of 14.87 million bales of cotton which has now fallen to 10.8 million bales as against the actual potential of 17.5 million bales annually.
He said that resultantly the spinning industry has to import annually around 4.0 million bales of raw cotton to meet its consumption requirement. Despite of the acute shortage of cotton, the previous government had imposed 3 percent custom duty, 2 percent additional custom duty and 5 percent sales tax on import of raw cotton, which should be removed immediately without any further delay.
He further demanded the government to remove custom duty and anti-dumping duty on import of polyester staple fiber, which is used as a substitute for cotton.
He also requested the government to review Free Trade Agreements and Preferential Trade Agreements in such a way that the exports of Pakistani goods to those countries be increased. He demanded govt/ to give special attention towards FTA with China since China is providing zero custom duty facility on import of textiles from ASEAN member countries, while 3.5 percent duty is imposed on textiles from Pakistan. The FTA with Turkey also needs to be renegotiated to facilitate textile exports to Turkey.
Comments
Comments are closed.