It is really apathy that the government is bent on repeating the mistake of collecting sales tax and then returning which is taking these exporters to the dark ages. During those times the scenario was different while today the exporters have been struck and greatly burdened with skyrocketing cost of doing business.
Yarn prices have tripled, power rates are rising day-by-day and if the government collects sales tax from the exporters for returning back afterwards, huge amount of the exporters liquidity will be blocked. In such a situation as today the exporters will be ruined and there will certainly be a huge exodus from this country with flight of capital abroad.
It is indeed a dilemma that while the government is wooing and pampering the foreign investors to come and invest in Pakistan, the ground fact is that the local investor is so much harassed and burdened that existence and continuing to invest and do business in Pakistan has become next to impossible. It is strongly felt that this planning is being done by the bureaucracy to drive away the exporters from the country. This was stated by M Jawed Bilwani, Co-ordinator, Value Added Textile Forum and Chairman, Pakistan Apparel Forum.
Such apathetic attitude of our government is really surprising and we really wonder why our government is not protecting the backbone of our economy the textile sector. Our neighbour China's total export of textile is $161 billion, which is 13 percent of their total export, but it does all it can to protect their export oriented industries just because they are labour intensive. India's textile exports are 12 percent of their total exports but they also are all out to protect their greatly labour intensive industries while our textile export is 54 percent of our total exports generating 42 percent of employment.-PR