PHMA for taking associations aboard on PM package disbursement

LAHORE: As the interim government is going to notify the extension of Duty Drawback of Taxes (DDT) under PM Export package extended and approved for next three years by the previous government, the value-added textile industry on Monday urged the Caretaker Federal Minister for Commerce and Textile to restore the role of associations in transparent disbursement of refunds, as they are the elected representatives of the exporters.

Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers Association (PHMA) has opposed the move of eliminating respective associations' role in the verification and disbursement of Duty Drawback under revised PM Package for exporters and called for taking all the relevant bodies on board to this regard.

Chairman PHMA Dr Khurram Anwar Khawaja congratulated Caretaker Commerce and Textile Industry Minister Mian Misbah-ur-Rehman and hoped that he would design a comprehensive strategy with the consultation of business community to boost exports. He said that after a serious decline in exports in the past few years, it had now picked up with the help of DDT under PM’s Export Package, which was extended for another three years but its notification was pending by the caretaker government.

Dr Khurram mentioned that Ministry of Textile Industry had unilaterly removed the role of associations as was in the previous notification of DLTL, adding that formerly, the associations had used to certify the authenticity of information provided by the exporting units and verify the claim documents by the authorized Executive Committee Members of the associations.

Dr Khawaja said that large number of complaints had been received from members of all associations that after elimination of role of associations, the responsibility of banks had increased to check the authenticity of claims as well as scrutiny of documents.

Consequently, exporters' claims had been delayed due to mistake on part of banks during checking and authenticity of claims followed by scrutiny owing to which SBP (State Bank of Pakistan) marked numerous objections and hence the exporters were facing inordinate delays.

He claimed that PHMA was an association of manufacturers and exporters of knitwear apparel products. This year the export of this sector was going to exceed US$2.5 billion and taken the knitwear and woven garments together, the apparel sector fetched more than US$5 billion dollars during 2017-18.