Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) has planned to rehabilitate and revive all sick units of Punjab after successful revival of sick units of NWFP. The Government has formed committees to rehabilitate and revive the sick industrial units of Punjab province but first priority would be given to the sick units of Multan.
This was stated by Alamgir Chaudhry Provincial Chief and Syed Iqbal Anwar Qidwai General Manager operation of Smeda while briefing the meeting on revival of Sick units chaired by Anis Ahmed Sheikh President of MCCI here on Sunday. The said that Multan committee would comprised of Secretary industry and production (Chairman), representatives of Smeda, Chairman of Industrial Estate Board of Management Multan, President Multan Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Directors of concerned sick unit.
They said that Smeda had carried out a comprehensive survey and compiled a fact-finding report which revealed that 22 industrial units had so far been closed in Multan due to financial constraints, load-shedding of electricity and natural gas, High mark-up and rates of raw material while similar number of industrial units are on the verge of closure. Smeda officials said that this committee would compile its recommendations after reviewing the feasibility report and ministry of industry and production would implement on these recommendations.
Anis Ahmed Sheikh said that we would attempt to take help from Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani in this regard because he was interested for the revival of the industry. He said that sick units are of vegetable Ghee, Flour, Ginning, Textile ginning, spinning, Pharmaceuticals, etc.
Anis Ahmed said that load shedding of electricity and gas had badly hit the industry and majority of industrial units forced to shut one shift of their factories rendering thousands of workers jobless while a number of units had stopped the manufacturing. This situation had affected the income and cash flow. Now they are unable to repay the debts and interest. They were hardly paying the wages of workers and utility bills. He suggested that Government should announce at least two years moratorium on long-term loans and one year moratorium on the repayment of mark-up.
He has expressed his great concern over the all-time record high inflation, which has gone up to 25.33 percent during 2008 from 6.45 percent over the same period of previous year. He said the phenomenon had escalated the prices of all essential food items to a level greatly eroding the purchasing power of the low-income groups resultantly slowing down the commercial and industrial activities in the country.
He called upon the government to take remedial measures on war footing to curb the runaway inflation, which will prove disastrous for our economy. The MCCI president said that for each one per cent increase in inflation, more and more people fall into poverty as inflation was hitting poor consumers harder. He said the poor people were highly sensitive to price changes in food, particularly staple food items and so much increase in inflation would further plunge them into lower levels of poverty.
He said due to many hikes in electricity, gas, fuel and food items' prices, the households were already struggling to meet the minimum standards of living and they may have no choice but to cut down their expenditures on health and children's education making our society backward.
Mian Mughis Ahmed Sheikh former president of MCCI said that Government should run all the closed power generation units which may help in bridging the gap in power generation and consumption. The meeting was also attended by Vice President Brigadier Ata-ullah Khan (Retd), Malik Asrar Awan, Mian Iqbal Hassan, Shamshad Jafari, Adnan Rashid, Muhammad Tariq, Khurram Javed and Asad Jafari.
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