Thursday's terrorist attack in the city has panicked the business community and they have feared further decline in business activities ahead in case of the continuity of terrorist activities in the country. It may be noted that the business community was highly disturbed over the earlier incident of terrorist attack on GHQ and they had expressed reservations on meeting the export targets for the current fiscal year.
Specially, the textile sector is in a big panic because of the adverse business circumstances and they are pleading for an early attention of the government. The textile industry circles are carrying an impression that the prevailing law and order situation in the country was detrimental to the business environment. Specially, they said, the export-oriented industry is likely to hit hard out of the current adverse law and order situation.
Also, the textile circles are not happy with the US government dilly-dallying approach towards extending a trade relation with Pakistan, causing colossal losses to the industry as well as the national exchequer. According to these circles, the US government is also not serious on extending the Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (ROZs) facility to Pakistan, as it promised some five years back. An undue delay in such a crucial time is resulting into deteriorating state of affairs in the textile sector, which is heavily dependent on the exports to the US market.
Furthermore, the recession like situation around the globe has also hit badly the local textile sector and Pakistan's exports are declining fast with every passing day. On local front, the textile industry is also passing through worst situation because of the high financial cost and unprecedented electricity shortage. Both the factors has resulted into closure of some 30 percent of the industry since 2007 and further fragile units are following the similar fate in beeline.
The government has though recently announced first-ever-five-year textile policy, aiming at increasing textile exports to 25 billion dollar by 2014, which according to the textile sectors, is a far-fetched idea and the government would have to burn midnight oil to get such an ambitious target. Specially, when the textile industry is also going to face acute sui gas shortage with the start of winter that would also affect the efficiency of the captive power plants-oriented textile units.
However, the press reports have suggested that the government would provide subsidised furnace oil to the textile industry for three months and divide textile industry into different zones to provide gas on rotational basis this winter.
According to these reports, the government assured the textile industry that it would provide surplus furnace oil for the captive power plants (CPPs) during the peak winter months. The textile circles are of the view that the government would have to rescue the industry by such emergency steps as any delay in reviving the textile industry would result into a total collapse of the economy ahead despite the inflow of 1.5 billion dollar annual aid from the US.
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