Industries will be shut down if interest-free loans not provided: UBG chief

Patron-in-Chief of the United Business Group (UBG) and former president of the FPCCI, S. M. Muneer, has said that the government should provide interest-free loans to industrialists for 4 years otherwise all industries will be shut down, and the unemployment rate will be one of the worst.

He said that the State Bank's introduction of the Temporary Refinance Scheme was a good move. This feature would be able to prevent dismissal of employees during the spell of the coronavirus, but its duration was less than three months (April to June 2020) while the situation demanded that it continued for at least a year, he said. S. M. Muneer said that no businessman could earn in Pakistan because the markup rate was one of the highest in the world.

In the present scenario the markup rate was one percent in many countries and even zero percent in some countries.

In order to compete with other countries in the present scenario, no industrialist could afford to pay such a high markup, he said.

Giving his own example, he said that he had four textile factories in Lahore, and all four of them were lying closed.

"I pay Rs7 crore [Rs70 million] in salaries every month," he said. S. M. Muneer said that he saluted PM Imran Khan who was fighting to improve the situation of the country.