Talking to newsmen after a joint meeting of industrialists and exporters at Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry, FCCI Khuwaja Asem Khurshid said on Friday that the industrialists and exporters would stage protest meetings from Monday (July 7).
He said that the textile industry was the biggest source of foreign exchange earning, providing jobs to thousands of people, could collapse due to the double blow of surging fuel prices and chronic power cuts.
Addressing the participants, former Chairman of Standing Committee of FPCCI on Textile and Exports Azhar Majeed Sheikh said that the value-added textile sector was facing worst ever crisis in Pakistan and price hikes in petroleum, gas, heavy taxation, reduction in research and development (R & D) and other government steps were sprinkling fuel on fire.
The value-added textile was already on the verge of collapse due to constant increase in cost of doing manufacturing and exports business in Pakistan. By increasing gas tariff by 68 percent for captive power industry by the government was like cold-blooded murder of the industry and export, he added.
"We wonder who is taking such unwise and 'kill the industry' decisions," he asked. Azhar Majeed Sheikh said that the government should realise that the textile industry provided employment to about 40 percent population of the country directly and about 20 percent indirectly. Also it earned 10 billions dollars in foreign exchange, which was 60 percent of the total exports of the country, he said.
"Unless and until new increase of 68 percent on captive power plant is withdrawn, textile exports are declared zero-rated (recently paying over six percent on protections, duties) and R & D is continued for at least a year, this industry, already on the death bed, will be scrapped and die. "Even if some relief is given later, the industry once closed and scrapped will not be able to be in operation again," he added.
PTEA Chairman Tahir Ishaque Bharara said that Pakistani textile products were already under great pressure in the international market and our exporters were not in a position to obtain export orders, and Pakistan was not in a position to compete with its regional rivals India, China, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
He said the government had already increased petroleum prices by 10 percent a day earlier and now with the 31 percent increase in gas tariff, a chain reaction of price hike of various items had started and the material used in manufacturing of export goods was becoming costlier.
"As a result, we are finding it almost impossible to keep the prices of our textile export goods equivalent or less than our competitors in the international market," he said. Bharara said if the prices of utilities like gas, electricity and petroleum products continued to rise every month, the textile industry in Pakistan would crumble under the burden of these hikes.
He said that textile sector, which was backbone of the country's economy and was earning 60 percent of foreign exchange and providing 38 percent of employment to people, would collapse totally and the national economy, which was already over-burdened with inflation, would be facing difficult position. The PTEA Chairman demanded zero-rating of export sector and level playing field for the export.
Other leading exporters and industrialists, including FIEDMC Chairman Mian Muhammad Latif, Mian Muhammad Idress, Mian Javed Iqbal and Choudhry Javed Aslam also addressed the meeting.