Pakistan Ship Breakers Association (PSBA) welcomed the imposition of 15 percent regulatory duty on the import of all steel billets, steel bars and wire rods. Chairman PSBA, Dewan Rizwan Farooqi said since 2010 the ship breaking industry had been providing 1.2 million tons of steel raw materials annually to the re-rolling, wire rod and steel melting industry.
The industry, though massive capital investments has ramped up its ability to cater to the country's downstream industries by taking its annual capacity from 0.15 million metric tones per annum in 2007 to 1.2 million tons in 2010. This allowed the ship breaking industry to provide much-needed revenue to the tune of Rs 11 Billion annually to Balochistan and the federal government, said the PSBA chief." We are grateful to the Government of Pakistan in saving Balochistan's largest industry from collapse and we hope we can continue to play a key role in job creation and revenue generation for Pakistan," said Dewan.
He said that the steel products were being imported via various FTA's and subsidies through manipulation and mis-decleration and thus created a difference of over 20 percent in the cost between locally manufactured goods. Whereas the cost decrease was not being passed on to the local consumers and the importer lobby was reaping huge profits whilst the local industry was brought to a standstill, he added.
This move by the government would help in bringing some stability to the local market and curbing revenue drain while providing a level playing field for the local Steel Sector, Dewan added. The Association salutes the federal government for this bold move which has helped to save thousands of jobs as well to the local steel industry. "We believe that this would not only strengthen revenue collection for the Government but would also show the Governments commitment for supporting local industries," said the PSBA chairman.
The country's largest steel raw-material supplier to the re-rolling and wire rod industry, the ship breakers claim to have invested over Rs 20 billion in Balochistan during the last five years. "Since last year, steel billets, wire rod and steel bars were being flooded into Pakistani market by way of dumping from abroad. This made the local industry unviable and, therefore, one of the local steel manufacturing sectors ie wires rod industry had totally shut down," claimed Dewan.