Ship-breakers' body seeks financial relief package

Dewan Rizwan Farooqui, Chairman of Pakistan Ship Breakers' Association (Psba), on Wednesday sought a financial and taxation relief package, saying that this major raw material ancillary sector needs attention from the government.

The Psba also seeks a meeting with the premier or the concerned minister to highlight its long-running problems and their resolution at the earliest.

Talking to Business Recorder, he said that growth of the construction industry was linked to low-cost steel.

He also pledged to supply steel at a price between Rs10,000 per ton and Rs15,000 per ton for the prime minister's low-cost housing project.

Being the ancillary industry to the construction sector, he said that the tax relief package provided to the builders should be extended to the ship breakers as well.

He termed the prime minister's decision for taxation relief package to the construction sector "prudent", saying that it would also help the allied industries, besides a huge number of daily-wage laborers.

"The provincial government should exempt a one percent infrastructure cess, which works to Rs600 and 600 percent increase in tonnage fees by the Balochistan Development Authority from original Rs50 to Rs300 per ton," Dewan Rizwan said, pointing out that the Sindh government had withdrawn the cess recently.

He feared that a continuing lack of attention of the federal government towards the ship breaking sector would bring it to a closure that may end supply of low cost steel to the poor segment of the society for construction, saying that the federal authorities should support this very industry.

He said that the industry needed necessary incentives for growth to help provide a value added raw material to the steel industry to meet the local requirements rather than direct import of rerollable scraps.

"We seek an appointment with the prime minister or his specially designated team to help us revive this cheapest source of quality raw material for steel industry in the country," chairman Psba said.

Highlighting the significance of ship breaking in the country, he said, it is a major industry in Balochistan, providing jobs to over 25,000 skilled and unskilled workers at Gadani with additional 200,000 workers in downstream industries. It also contributed over Rs16.250 billion to the national exchequer in fiscal year 2017-18.

"However this industry was deliberately made to fail during the last two years," he said.

The ship breaking industry was a major source of the best quality raw material to steel processing and manufacturing industries in the country including rerolling mills, small-scale steel cottage industries and melting furnaces, he said.

The steel used in ships was certified by Lloyds and other major international classification societies. This sector served as one of the largest sources of steel raw material provider in the country for the last five decades at Gadani, he said.