The government has provided maximum tax incentives and concessions to the textile sector, including exemption of customs duty on import of a wide range of textile machinery and equipment, which has enhanced exports of textile products during the second quarter (October-December) 2009-10.
Federal Secretary for Textile Industry Waqar Masood Khan told Business Recorder here on Friday that the government had fulfilled a major demand of the textile sector to zero-rate duty on the import of textile machinery. He said the new textile policy had started showing good results following issuance of notifications in September. "This is evident from increase in textile exports during the second quarter (October-December)," he added.
On monthly basis, he said, textile exports had increased by 825 million dollars. However, exports during the first quarter of the current fiscal were not significant, but the situation started improving after the announcement of the new textile policy in August.
Waqar Massod said in April-June (2008-09), textile exports stood at 725 million dollars per month in the said quarter. When contacted, leading textile exporters said that under the new policy, the Ministry of Textile had issued three notifications to facilitate the industry. They said the textile manufacturers would receive three-percent drawback on garments, two percent on home textile and one percent on fabrics. A relaxation of 2.5 percent was given in the interest rate under the export-financing scheme, they added.
The government has for the first time made the Employees Old-Age Benefits Institution (EOBI) part of the textile policy and allowed its reimbursement to encourage women employment in textile industry.
They said the implementation of new schemes, issued by the Textile Ministry, seemed to be difficult as the government had not cleared last year's dues. If the funding for clearance of the past dues was not available, how could the funds be generated for recently announced new schemes? they questioned. After the passage of three to four months of the new textile policy, SROs of only 30 percent of the total announced schemes have been issued, while the remaining are yet to be issued by the concerned departments. The government had announced that 60 percent of R & D pending dues of last year would now be paid to the textile exporters. However, the registration process for obtaining past dues was so cumbersome that only 10 percent companies would qualify for the R&D, the textile exporters added.