Those elected unopposed for the central executive committee members from Punjab are Rehman Naseem, Danish Monnoo, Kh Zahid Rasheed, Shaiq Javed, Hamid Zaman and Kamran Arshad.
The Election Commission declared Adil Bashir as Chairman Punjab, Abdul Rahim Nasir as Senior Vice Chairman, Aamir Shaikeh as Vice Chairman and Kamran Arshad as Treasurer and nine members for the Regional Managing Committee of Punjab region.
The new APTMA leadership will take charge in the Annual General Meeting of the Association to be held on 30th September, 2019. While extending his heartiest congratulations to the newly-elected team, Patron-in-Chief Gohar Ejaz has set a minimum agenda of industry revival and export-led growth across the value chain for the new team through outreach to all sub-sectors for effective public advocacy.
He has expressed the hope that the new APTMA leadership would secure long term policy enablers from the government to bring the industry back on its feet to start performing as per its potential by investing in new capacities to produce an exportable surplus.
He said a number of issues are emanating from the prevailing post-budget uncertainty in the industry. The sales tax refund of the exporters for the month of July has become due after filing of the return and depositing of the required tax. He said the government had announced the payment of 90 per cent refund within 14 days of its due date.
The government should immediately pay the refund of all such exporters, he asserted. He has also urged the new leadership to take up the issue of availability of electricity and gas at a regionally competitive rate, ie, at $6.5 per MMBTU and 7.5 cents per kWh respectively for the next five years to all the exporting sectors. It would enable the industrialists to take investment decisions only if the government issues a notification immediately.
Furthermore, he said the Long Term Finance Facility (LTFF) should also be available to the indirect exporters in the value-added supply chain so that domestically produced goods are available on the end products meant for exports.
Creation and of new jobs and bridging the trade gap can only be possible with the announcement of a long term textile policy, he stressed.
He said tax anomalies like withholding tax on local supplies, zero withholding tax on utilities and further tax on domestic sales and the condition of CNIC should be removed. Otherwise, he added, the government should notify that no sale would be allowed to unregistered buyers at all.