Chairman Pakistan Textile Exporters Association (PTEA) Mian Zahid Aslam has said that textile Industry was facing severe crisis as dozens of mills had closed down and thousands of workers had been rendered un-employed and millions of rupees investment had been blocked.
Talking to newsmen here on Friday he said that the crisis had shedding negative impact on export orders and textile exports had fallen by 5 percent in August, 2007. He cautioned that if the government did not intervene immediately the textile sector could collapse.
He said that Pakistani Textile Sector had imported 5 billion dollars machinery over the last 6 years to modernise and upgrade their manufacturing line and production capacity to face the challenges of the new World Trade Order (WTO).
Many of the exporters installed new units intending to maximise exports in the new Free World Trade Market but some internal and external negative factors had created crisis in the textile sector, he noted.
Pin pointing these negative factors he told that these include protective tariff on raw material like polyester fiber, dyes & chemicals etc, increase in the cost of electricity and gas, increase in cost of carriage inward and outward, increase in bank mark-up rates and service charges, unexpected load shedding, increase in rate of petroleum products and huge burden of federal, provincial and local taxes and levies on the internal side and huge tariff walls and non-tariff barriers on the external side had cumulatively increased the cost of production of Pakistani textiles.
As a result of this disequilibrium the Pakistani exportable goods were unable to compete in the international market with rival countries. This incompetitiveness has plunged the textile sector into crisis and if the Government did not take immediate remedial measures the textile sector which is the backbone of the national economy will face total disaster, he warned.