LAHORE: The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) has convened an emergent meeting of its central executive committee on Tuesday (today) to take a decision about closing down the industry operations across the province of Punjab.
APTMA Punjab Chairman Adil Bashir Monday said the prevailing uncertainty due to inordinate delay in the issue of notification for a regionally competitive energy prices by the government has seriously impacted the growth in exports, production and investment sectors. He said the government had announced in a meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) held on September 27 that energy will be supplied to the Punjab-based exporting industry, both for captive and processing use, at regionally competitive price to make it viable and to revive the closed capacity. A long-term objective of this initiative was to attract new investment and to double the textile and clothing exports, he added.
“The export data for the month of October 2018 indicates that both the industry and exports have become the victim of prevailing uncertainty. As the export of cotton yarn and cotton cloth have dropped by over 39 percent and 24.11 percent respectively against the corresponding period. Also, the overall exports of textile and clothing have declined by 0.21 per cent during the same period,” he said. “It is quite confusing as to why the government is delaying the notification for tariff equalization for the export industry in Punjab despite a firm assurance and commitment by Prime Minister Imran Khan,” he wondered. “The gas is being supplied at Rs488 per MMBTU in Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa against Rs1,663 per MMBTU for the mills in Punjab,” he revealed.
Bashir said the existing industry in Punjab cannot even survive under the given circumstances what to talk of its revival in the near future. He said that 30 percent of the production capacity across spinning, weaving and processing sectors with an export potential worth $4 billion has been closed down due to the high cost of business in the province of Punjab.
Published in Daily Times, November 20th 2018.
