Textile tycoons on Sunday warned the government of severe consequences of curtailing gas supply to the textile industry by one more day. Addressing a hurriedly called video conference, office-bearers of All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptnma) objected to the move and urged the government to immediately reverse its decision. Otherwise, they said, textile workers would mount fierce protests.
The meeting was attended by Aptma's group leader Gohar Ejaz, Chairman Mohsin Aziz, Chairman of Aptma's Punjab chapter Ahsan Bashir, Sindh chapter chief Yasin Siddique, Chairman of its Energy Committee Shahzad Ali Khan and the Vice-Chairmen of all zones of the association.
The government is likely to cut textile industry's gas supply for generating an additional 300MW of electricity.
Aptma leaders pointed out that closing down a productive sector of the national economy would result in increasing unemployment, besides loss of domestic exports. The government, they said, was trying to complicate the situation, as just 50,000 tons of furnace oil was required to generate 300MW of electricity.
Criticising the decision, they said that policymakers were adamant to deprive the textile industry of gas for three days in Punjab, besides proposing closing down industry in Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunka for just once a week. Condemning the approach, Aptma leadership said the government's economic team was not advising properly advising the Prime Minister.
They said that closing down textile industry in Punjab would not make any difference in bridging the demand-supply gap, which was now more than 6,000-megawatt of electricity. They said that it would result in rendering a million workers jobless, besides causing the industry a loss of more than Rs100 billion.
The participants of the meeting wondered about the logic of what they termed the government's highly uneconomic approach and said that they feared that it would be detrimental to the national intereests, adding that it would hurt the country's exports, revenues, jobs and cotton farmers.
Aptma's Chairman Mohsin Aziz said that the textile industry was already operating 40 percent below capacity, resulting in a reduction of more than 30 percent by the end of 2011-12.
He said that the industry had already suffered a loss of Rs500 billion because of the energy shortage, adding that the size of non-performing loans against the industry had swelled to more than 30 percent total banking sector liabilities.
Reminding the government of the textile sector's importance, he said that no past government had ever cut this sector's gas supply for any reason, especially in an election year. He said that instead of cutting the industry's gas supply, the government should increase the supply of furnace oil to power plants to overcome the shortage of 6000MW of electricity.
Taking exception to the government's decision without taking the industry into confidence, he also wondered why there was no Aptma representation on the committee on the subject.
The Aptma leadership unanimously resolved to oppose the decision and expressed the hope that sanity would prevail in government circles and gas supply to the industry would continue for five days a week in accordance with the previous schedule.
Furthermore, Aptma leadership also called for to increasing gas supply to the textile industry to seven days a week, enabling the industry to operate at its full potential to increase exports and generates employment in the country.