PAKISTAN: Committee formed to Resolve Textile Industry Crisis
LAHORE: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has constituted a three-member committee to find a solution to the crisis in the textile industry caused by imposition of 15 per cent regulatory duty on export of cotton yarn.
Egytex News Desk
Source: www.dawn.com
The committee comprising Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance Dr Hafeez Sheikh, Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar and State Minister for Finance and Economic Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar is said to have been formed after the premier's meeting with a delegation of spinners.
The value-added industry has, nevertheless, rejected the composition of the committee, saying at least one of its members had financial business interests in the spinning industry.
"This new committee has apparently been formed to reverse the textile ministry's decision to restrict exports of cotton yarn through imposition of regulatory duty and ensure its availability at reasonable prices in the domestic market," a prominent leader of the knitwear industry, Shahzad Azam Khan, told dawn on Sunday night.
The duty on yarn export was imposed on May 13 on the recommendation of the textile ministry to control the commodity's soaring domestic prices on the back of its rising global cotton price. The domestic yarn prices are fluctuating between Rs105 and Rs110 per pound since the imposition of the duty, down from Rs120 and Rs125 per pound.
Since then yarn producers have called two-day closure of their factories every week in order to curtail their ‘surplus' production.
They say the industry was producing 60,000 tons of surplus yarn every month, which needed to be exported.
They also claim that their export shipments are stuck at the Karachi port since imposition of the export duty and they ‘have not been able to send even a single pound of yarn'.
Meanwhile, the state-owned APP news agency quoted the chairman of the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association as saying that the association had called off its strike after a meeting with the premier.
Talking to media personnel, APTMA Chairman Ejaz Gohar announced that the strike had been called off. The government should help resolve all the problems faced by the industry as soon as possible, the agency quoted him as saying.
He said the APTMA was never in favour of strikes but it had to register its protest due to unavoidable circumstances.
Source: www.dawn.com
From the Egytex news archive, first published on 3 June 2010. Figures and names are as reported at the time.
