The Quota Supervisory Council (QSC) has urged the Ministry of Commerce (MoC) to release blocked, exceptional flexibility and residual quotas immediately.
It aims at helping the exporters advance their shipments to avoid import duty after the withdrawal of the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) by the European Union (EU) from January next.
A QSC meeting, held under the chairmanship of Abdul Aziz Memon in Lahore, noted the pressure in Cat-EU-5 had intensified in the context of Pakistan graduating from the GSP scheme would lead of imposition of the import duty.
The EU buyers were pressing hard for arrival of their shipments before December 31, the Council said.
In view of the subsidy provided to the textile sector in China and India at the rate of 13 percent and 10 percent respectively, the Council urged the government to provide relief to the exporters up to 10 percent of the export value to the knitwear and garment sector to help them compete with their rivals in the world market. A decision to that effect had already been taken in the new trade policy.
The Council members requested the MoC to allow 20 percent over-programming in categories with up to 40 percent utilisation and 10 percent over-programming in categories with up to 50 percent utilisation.
These recommendations were made by the Council in its last meeting.
The Council observed that SRO-410 meant for temporary importation was providing comfortable mechanism to the exporters to meet their requirement of trims and materials.
It was, therefore, resolved that the government should continue the validity of the SRO.
The Council decided to recommend to the government that all the export units, exporting up to 90 percent of their production, should be given the status of the export processing zone.
The members noted the value-added garment sector was mostly export-oriented and had made heavy investments on the import of machinery, development of infrastructure, exploration of markets and investment in quota, but it was facing difficulties due to local laws.
The Council members, who attended the meeting are, Jawwad Chaudhry, Tahir Jahangir, Shahzad Azam Khan, M.I. Khurram, Arshad Javed and Adil Butt.