The business community has appealed to the government to immediate resolve the goods transporters' issue, as their strike is not only causing huge losses to the importers and exporters but also damaging their repute because of non-fulfilment of orders.
Pakistan Tanners Association (PTA) Chairman, Agha Saiddain has written a letter to the Federal Secretary of Commerce and Provincial Minister for Transport, Sindh to draw their attention towards the issue and said the strike would further damage the already shrinking economic activities across the countries. The importers and exporters, particularly of the leather industry based in Karachi and Punjab are very much on the horns of a dilemma, as their production is severely affected because of non availability of imported raw material specially chemicals.
In the absence of transportation, the importers and exporters are forced to incur heavy expenditure which causes increase in cost of production as well as inordinate delay in shipments of their consignments. On one hand, the government is bent upon motivating the manufacturers-cum-exporters to boost the volume of exports to earn maximum foreign exchange for the national exchequer and on the other no attention is paid to ventilate the genuine grievances of the importers/exporters like the problems highlighted above, he added.
He urged the authorities concerned to take stock of this alarming situation and take up the matter on priority basis with all sincerity towards its resolution by addressing the problem of the goods transporters. The action needs to be taken as soon as possible failing which further delay in the matter will be disastrous for all the export oriented industries in general and leather sector in particular which is already witnessing decline, he maintained.
Meanwhile, Chairman Auto Parts Manufacturer and Exporters Association, Malik Tahir Javed has also urged the government to solve the problem of transporters without further delay. In a statement issued here on Wednesday he said that the goods transport carriers strike has completely halted the export and import activities and has also damaged the industrial manufacturing capacity of the country resulting in per day losses that runs into billion rupees.
The strike entered 11th day on Wednesday virtually stopped business activities as the goods are not reaching the ports due to which the country had suffered a loss of exports of million dollars so far, he mentioned. He said that the goods transport carriers strike had not only hit shipments of export consignments but also disturbed import business as importers were forced to pay demurrages for not being able to clear their consignments from the ports. The strike is also affecting manufacturing activity as industrial units were not receiving raw materials and fuel to run their mills, thus resulting in a loss of over Rs 3.6 billion per day.
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