A meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Textile Industry held on Thursday in the Parliament House, Islamabad which discussed the present crises in Textile Industry and progress of the rationalisation of Industrial Gas Tariff by re-adjusting cross subsidy. Chaudhry Nazir Ahmed Jatt presided over the meeting.
Mushtaq Ali Cheema, Minister for Textile Industry gave a comprehensive briefing on the present crises in the Textile Industry. He informed the committee, there are few very crucial factors involved in the present crises such as heavy cost of credit finance, taxation and resulting liquidity crunch on internal side and heavily Government backed supportive policies of our regional rivals like Bangladesh, India, China and Sri Lanka.
He said the export re-finance rate in Pakistan has increased from 3 percent to 9 percent. Textile industry also complains of the high cost of gas, electricity and petroleum. External trade and tariff barriers such as higher import duties by USA and anti-dumping duties by European Union, Banks interest rate on loan has been increased up to 14 percent.
The Minister for Textile Industry also informed the committee that a new Textile City is also being set up in Karachi, under the management of Public-Private joint Stock Company and three garment cities are being set up in Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad.
The meeting was informed that natural gas subsidy is being provided to fertiliser industry and domestic consumers to keep the prices low. It was also informed that to address the issue, a Cabinet Committee on Energy (CCE) was constituted by the Cabinet with the task of making recommendations for the consideration and approval of the Prime Minister.
The Committee decided that next time a joint meeting of National Assembly and Senate may be called on the crises of Textile industry for the finalisation of different committee's reports.
In the meeting Ministry of Labour and Manpower including their Secretary Worker Welfare Funds (working in the Provinces), Finance, Environment, Agriculture, Chairman Wapda, Member Sales tax and Chairman CBR would be invited to facilitate the committee.
Besides the Chairman, Haroon Ihsan Pirach, Ahmed Raza Maneka, Sahibzada Muhammad Mehboob Sultan, Iqbal Muhammad Ali Khan, Maulana Rehmat Ullah Khalil. Dr Farid Ahmed Pirach, Nayyer Sultana, Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed, Yasmeen Rehman, Syed Amir Ali Shah, Muhammad Pervaiz Malik and Minister for Textile Industry were also present in the meeting, says a statement issued by the National Assembly Secretariat here today.
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