President Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (FCCI), Shabbir Husssain Chawla has expressed concern over the Regulatory Duty (RD) levied on more than 700 items without any consultation with stakeholders.
Commenting over the Regulatory Duty (RD), he termed this trend as the continuity of one-sided and undemocratic decisions taken by the government, particularly in connection with economic related matters, adding that it is highly detrimental to the national economy.
He said that the business community has no objection on levy of RD on unnecessary and luxury items, but it is a principle stand of the business community including FCCI that government must taken on board the stakeholders before making such important and fundamental decisions which will also have trickling effect on the overall business and industry.
He lamented that in the garb of luxury items, government has imposed RD on various dyes & chemicals which are used as basic raw material for the manufacturing of exportable textile products. Among these include organic surface active products, non ionic, pigment thickener and acrylic thickener etc.
He said that RD on such items will further add to the cost of production of exportable textile products which are already losing ground in international markets because of their un-competitiveness.
He said that similarly there must be many more such items which are being utilized in the manufacturing of exports products. He said that government is striving to bridge the widening gap between our imports & exports, but such decisions will have negative impact and foil our efforts to increase the exports.
Chawla further said that government has to take prudent decisions to encourage the substitution of unnecessary imports as heavy RD will result in its smuggling and in this case the government will not get the expected RD but also lose the duties already collected by the imports of these items through official channels.
Comments
Comments are closed.