Tanners’ association expresses concern over monitoring system

KARACHI: The Chairman of the Pakistan Tanners Association (PTA), Muhammad Azam Malik, has expressed deep concern over the FBR’s Digital Monitoring Production System for tanneries as per a notification dated 07.10.2026 with due implementation within seven days “which is totally impossible”.

He said that the tanning industry was the most value added export-oriented industry in the country in terms of contributing significantly to the country’s GDP.

He also said that tanning industry was purely an export-oriented industry of the country.

The leather industry remains fully committed to transparency and compliance with all applicable tax and regulatory requirements, the PTA chief said.

Its export-oriented production, sales, and export transactions are already comprehensively documented through the Pakistan Single Window (PSW), goods declarations (GDs), commercial invoices, banking records, sales tax returns and income tax filings, he said.

These existing statutory mechanisms already provide the relevant authorities with comprehensive and verifiable information, he said.

Accordingly, the proposed New Digital Production Monitoring System would duplicate existing compliance requirements, increase operational complexity and compliance costs, and impose an unnecessary regulatory burden without providing any significant additional benefits, he said.

He alleged that the system would be detrimental to the smooth production for meeting export orders.

The industry is already suffering from high cost of doing business in Pakistan as compared to neighboring competitors like India, Bangladesh, Turkey, China etc., and facing hard competition in international market for securing export orders, he said.

Such kind of FBR measures would create further hardships for

“our member exporters for the export of valued finished leather to world/foreign buyers”, he said.

In light of the above factors, the Chairman of PTA, M. Azam Malik, appealed to the prime minister to intervene in the matter to refrain the FBR from implementing Digital Monitoring System for the tanning industry.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026