Prgmea for early payment of R&D support claims

Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturing and Exporters Association (Prgmea) has urged the government to pay immediately research and development (R&D) support claims for shipments up to June 30, 2008.
"An inordinate delay in implementing the decision of the government has put the exporters in severe financial crunch, hence they should be given leverage to export against competition," said Prgmea Chairman Jamshaid Hanif here on Wednesday.
He said that former Federal Finance Minister Syed Naveed Qamar, in a meeting, had assured representatives of the PAF that the government would continue to provide R&D support up to June 30, 2009 for apparel sector. After his assurance, he said, apparel exporters had confirmed orders of their foreign buyers, incorporating the support promised by the government.
"The apparel exporters are perturbed as to how they would meet their international commitment," he said, adding that a fairly large number of garment exporting units had suffered huge losses and were unable to honour their commitment because of liquidity crunch.
He said that the garment industry was paying multiple taxes to the tune of around 11 percent. He was of the opinion that this multiple collections of taxes from apparel exporters be refunded or real zero-rating of taxes, levies and duties for whole textile manufacturing-cum-export sector be implemented. He said that higher cost of export financing had rendered their products uncompetitive in the international market, while developed economies were going through recession and had reduced their interest rates.
"Pakistan needs to reduce its mark-up rates on export financing to promote exports, which must be brought to three percent," Jamshaid said. He further said that value-added textile exporters, who were not defaulters in utilising short-term export refinance Part-I with satisfactory performance for the last three years, be entitled for long-term financing, equal to the extent of the amount entitled of export finance Part-II at the rate of three percent per annum, enabling them to upgrade their manufacturing facilities to match with the technology up-gradation programme of India.