Despite regional growth in leather industry, Pakistan's leather garment industry is in reversal and declining position in exports. "The country's leather industry is on verge of closure as government is not paying attention to resolve its issues," said Chairman Pakistan Leather Garments Manufacturers & Exporters Association (PLGMEA) Atif Ashraf.
He further said that leather garment industry of Pakistan is in distress and may collapse, if federal government does not come forward to bail out by giving incentives and extra attention to address the issues faced by the leather garments exporters. Our industry is high value-added industry and after textiles it is the second largest value-added export sector of Pakistan.
The decline in quantity of leather garments exports is around 12.35 percent during the last fiscal year (FY16), which is very alarming and the industry is facing closure. He said that unless the government announces and implements relief package for this industry, the exporters will be forced to close down their units causing unemployment to workers.
Atif mentioned that the governments of India and China have offered high duty drawback rates to their exporters to boost exports. China offers 8.5 percent duty-drawback rate on export of leather garments and India 9.5 percent. "Our duty-drawback rate is only 4.26 percent for leather jackets. This Duty drawback percentage assigned when the taxes at import stage was at "Zero" percent for raw skin, pickle and wet blue," he added.-PR