The demand of household furniture goods has witnessed a straight decline of around 30 percent during the last five years in the wake of higher raw material prices and lower purchasing power, dealers said on Thursday.
The other reasons behind the demand in furniture decrease are believed to be minimum use of new furniture, which is estimated around 10 percent normally, while 90 percent at newly constructed houses and prices increase in furniture by every year.
"Foam prices increase every year by 20-25 percent, besides increasing price of glue used in furniture manufacturing and colour, high rates of chip boards and expensive wood are all the contributing factors in the price hike of furniture goods," furniture dealer said.
Criticising the government, he said it had failed to control the prices of all raw materials, used in furniture manufacturing.
"Government's concerned authorities are powerless and having no writ to fix its official prices of raw materials used in the furniture manufacturing," he commented.
He demanded of the government to facilitate the furniture manufacturers to boost up country's economy through furniture exports. "Country's export deficit is thought to experience decrease if the domestic producers are not helped through subsidies and taxes rebate on the imports of machinery," he expressed concerns.
He said utilities' expenditure was high and contributing to the price increase of the furniture goods, therefore, the government should also look into the matter and make efforts to decrease them for the development of industries.
Regarding the Chinese products, he said they had flooded the local markets around by 70 percent and the local products were unable to compete with them due to problems faced by the local industries.
He said export position was not clear for the domestic producers because they had not the latest technologies and machinery to produce world class furniture of real wood. Domestic labour was the best in the field of furniture production to compete with any other country world-wide, he added.
"Domestic producers are more competitive in making of Deco furniture of Italian type against the Italian producers of same kind of furniture, which is remarkable," he said.
He said the government's full support was necessary to the furniture industry, adding rebate on the import duty of machinery, concession on utilities expenditure, and other incentives were badly required from the government to help augment the industry.
Around 30 prominent furniture markets and 10,000 manufacturers are linked to the business in the metropolis while millions in the country have been severely affected by the abnormal and continued sharp rise in the prices of raw materials, he said.
Urging upon the government, he said it should also check the imports of ready-made Chinese products, which had completely occupied the local market and was rising as threat for local manufacturers.