LAHORE: The Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) on Tuesday urged the government to ban the export of copper bars to safeguard the local industry.

In a letter to the Federal Minister for Industries & Production Muhammad Hammad Azher, LCCI President Mian Tariq Misbah said that copper is one of the most important base metals for use in the engineering sector. The small & medium enterprises (SMEs) involved in the engineering sector including electric cables, enamel wire for all kinds of motors/pumps, control panels, use copper as raw material for various components.

These industries employ thousands of workers and produce value-added products that are widely used in industrial, commercial and domestic sectors, he added.

Mian Tariq Mishab said that most of the SMEs cannot directly import the metal due to minimum shipment size, lack of access to the international trade network or unavailability of bank trade lines. They primarily depend on the copper extracted from scrap and refined by local furnaces/metal plants, he said.

He said that the local copper metal plants/furnaces prefer to export the copper due to export and tax benefits. As exporting the base metal with little value addition is not in the interest of the country, the governments in the past, had imposed a duty to discourage its export.

“However, the influential furnace/metal plant owners have lobbied at FBR and got the ban removed,” he added and said that the export of copper not only exponentially increases the metal price in the local market but also causes serious shortage of the material. He said that copper export has severely impacted the SMEs ability to produce value added products.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020