Textile exporters: old age benefit, social security money to be refunded

The Government has decided to refund old age benefit and social security money to the registered textile exporters to facilitate and promote textile exports of the country, said Shahid Rashid, Secretary, Textile Industry. Addressing a meeting of textile exporters at Pakistan Textile Exporters Association, he said that the Government was fully aware of the problems and importance of the textile industry.
The Government realised that textile sector was the biggest source of forex earning and also major source of employment in the country. Survival of the country and national economy depends upon the running of the wheels of textile industry, he emphasised. He regretted that due to funding gap, the Textile Policy could not be implemented in a real manner.
Textile Policy was aimed at incorporation of the strategies that were essential to address the challenges confronting textile sector on sustainable basis beside, meeting the expectations of the industry, he said. He welcomed the reduction in bank mark-up rate by 150 basis points to 12 percent and expressed hope that this move of State Bank of Pakistan would lower the cost of credit for the private sector in Pakistan.
Shahid said that the ministry of finance has been approached to release funds for the textile sector against duty drawback and other heads. An amount of Rs 24 billion of textile sector has remained stuck up on account of duty drawback and efforts were being made to get at least apart of amount released from the Ministry of Finance so that textile sector could be given some relief, he said.
He said that efforts are on to release amounts remained stuck up against DLTL also. Regarding extension in drawback, he said that all textile exporting associations have demanded extension in drawback facility. A meeting is being held at Islamabad this week to discuss and decide any extension in drawback.
Earlier, Arif Tauseef, Chairman of Pakistan Textile Exporters Association, welcomed Secretary, Textile. In his address, he explained in detail the problems and hurdles faced by textile exports and industry. He apprised the Textile Secretary that PTEA had financially assisted the civil aviation in upgrading the Faisalabad airport for international flights.
However, due to some unknown reasons the dream of international flights has remained unfulfilled. He said that gas and electricity shortages have shed negative impact on entire industrial sector that was already passing through very challenging times. Not only the textile exports and productions have nose-dived but the graph of unemployment has also gone up.
To regulate the industrial process in the country, he demanded to inject LPG in gas system. Drawback of local taxes was introduced in the textile policy and produced good results and exports of value-added textile goods have increased during last two years, he said. This facility was ended in June this year; he added, and demanded its extension for next two years.
Billions of rupees of value added textile exporters were stuck up in sales tax, drawback, customs rebate and excise duty refund regimes creating liquidity crunch and hampering the export growth and turn over. He hoped that secretary would intervene and arrange funds for the payments of stuck up amounts.
PTEA Chairman demanded reduction in rate of bank mark-up, smooth flow of electricity and gas, reduction in energy cost, reduction in cost of production, market access to developed countries, and level playing field. He pleaded for export-friendly policies. Later, souvenirs of PTEA were presented to Textile Secretary.