Improving supply of gas, electricity: textile industry coming out of energy shocks

Punjab textile industry is gradually coming out of the energy shocks with improving supply of gas and electricity to the manufacturing units. Sources from the textile industry told Business Recorder that the SNGPL has finally reverted to the Cabinet Committee's gas load shedding decision of ensuring five days a week uninterrupted gas supply to the SNGPL.
The SNGPL could not act upon the decision due to the non-co-operation from the SSGPL, which was due to supply 200 MMCFD to the SNGPL during the gas load shedding in Punjab. The textile sector has paid a heavy price in Punjab, as textile industry sources claimed that the industry suffered a loss of Rs 2 billion daily besides redundancy of some 350,000 labourers in the province.
The textile sector has paid kudos to the SNGPL authorities, which has considerably reduced the load shedding period this year to about 30 days against some 77 days last year during the same period. However, the Pepco-fed textile units are the worst hit, as majority of them witnessed a fresh spell of heavy load shedding during the canal desilting period.
The APTMA leadership in Punjab has been agitating strongly in favour of such units. It has pointed out that the Pepco-fed textile units are at the verge of collapse because of the rising scarcity of electricity in the country besides inflating gap of per unit cost between them and the gas-reliant units, which comes around Rs 2.5 per unit.
It may be noted that President Asif Ali Zardari has desired a separate tariff for the Pepco-fed units in order to mitigate the tariff difference between them and the gas-reliant units. But the bureaucratic hiccups have to yet to take many turns before President's desire can see the daylight.
The Pepco-fed textile millers told Business Recorder that they were heading towards a dead-end gradually due to the non-availability of uninterrupted power supply to them. According to them, majority of such units are based in areas where sui gas is not available. Therefore, such units have no option but to compromise with the power scarcity in the country, which means a death warrant to them.
Interestingly, the Ministry of Textile is looking irrelevant to the spinning industry woes, as instead of pursuing aggressively there case in front of the federal Cabinet, the Federal Textile Minster is more interested in negating the free market mechanism simply to appease his voters in Faisalabad region by imposing quota restriction on cotton yarn exports. Experts are of the view that Pakistan economy is heavily dependant on textile industry but the present spell of awkward circumstances is weakening this industry fast and any further delay in reversal to the situation would shatter Pakistan's economy.