Withholding of fuel adjustments: Textile industry facing huge liquidity crunch: Aptma chief

Chairman of All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) S M Tanveer has warned that the textile industry is facing a huge liquidity crunch following withholding of fuel prices adjustments worth Rs 40 billion by the Central Power Purchase Agency for April and May this year. He has blamed the government for failing to notify the latest industrial tariff determined by NEPRA for 2014-15 so far, causing concerns amongst industrialists at large.
He said the most recent NEPRA public hearing for the slapping of over Rs 2 per unit of various surcharges on the electricity tariff on the request of the government has also panicked the industry. That, this was being done after a Lahore High Court decision to hold the earlier changing of surcharges illegal led the industry to believe that some elements do not want the Pakistani industry to compete with the region and others.
"Such surcharges are irrelevant to the purchase and sales of electricity and therefore they could not be levied on the already burdened textile industry," he added. He also said the textile industry was 100 percent compliant in bills payment with zero line losses on independent and grouped 11KV feeders and lamented that the government was introducing uncalled for surcharges, especially when different provincial governments and the K-Electric are in default of more than Rs 250 billion to the CPPA and the government had arranged loans to counter this default.
"It was surprising that the fully compliant textile industry was forced to pay for the loan repayment. The government has imposed equalisation surcharge to subsidise the inefficiencies, corruption and line losses of the DISCOs," he added. He urged the government to avoid imposition of illegal surcharges and to release the monthly fuel price adjustments immediately.