Cottage industry 80 percent fall in cottage industry production from power outages, violence incidents

Electricity load shedding and violence have reduced cottage industry's production by about 80 percent in the city, besides scaling down trade and business activities in the markets to almost nothing since the Ramazan has begun, traders said on Wednesday.
"No sales of various items of household items including furniture, electronics, etc, could be seen since the Ramazan has started because of the continued violence and power outages in the city," said Chairman of All Karachi Tajir Ittehad, Atiq Mir. He expressed fears about the Eid-ul-Fitr sales of different items, which the entire country's businessmen purchased from Karachi could not even increase beyond 50 percent if the law and order situation and electricity supply could not improve.
"Every Eid season for Karachi's traders fetches about Rs 50 billion, but the continued bad economic circumstances are dissuading the buyers of Pakistan's other parts to reach Karachi and make purchases," he said. He said the power load shedding had already cut the cottage industry production to mere 20 percent during the last 15 days, which the ever-deteriorating law and order situation coupled to keep some of the units closed in troubled areas.
He said the markets faced about two hours of electricity load shedding in the 12 pm to 5 pm business activities in Ramazan whereas cottage industry was facing more hours of power outages during its production hours from 8 am to 4 pm. Atiq also resented the trend of spreading rumours about the political instability or violence, saying such moves virtually had negative impact on the trade and businesses. He said "businesses have suffered utmost from rumours".
He said: "The small business of food items however remains largely in the city despite widespread of violence and electricity load shedding as it was the most basic need of human," adding that the furniture, clothing, toys, garments, shoes, candles, automobile parts and such other business had suffered phenomenally.
He said small-scale businessmen were "very much" disappointed since their businesses could not take off in the Ramazan for lack of power and violence. He said cottage industry was also in bad condition for the same reasons. He urged the government to stem the continued unrest in the metropolis with better economic strategy and anti-terrorism politics so that the city's businessmen could thrive and help the national economy grow.