Trade regime unchanged despite tensions with India

Senator insists on curbing import of value-added goods instead of raw material

ISLAMABAD: Despite diplomatic tensions between Pakistan and India, the trade regime had not been changed by the government, Minister of Commerce Khurram Dastgir Khan told the Senate Standing Committee on Textile Industry on Thursday.

He was speaking in response to a point raised by Committee Chairman Senator Mohsin Aziz, who said a huge quantity of Indian raw cotton had been stopped at Karachi Port.



Dastgir said the government had not issued any notification in that regard. However, it has limited the import of cotton through Wagah border to 500,000 bales in a year while there is no such restriction at Karachi Port.

Aziz urged the government to instead ban value-added products from the neighbouring country in a bid to protect the local textile industry.

The meeting was informed that the local textile industry was in a dilapidated condition and its exports were on the decline due to a number of issues including high prices of gas and electricity, high tariffs on import of input materials, lack of progress on restructuring of bank loans and failure to revive sick units.

Mian Lateef of the Chen One group told the committee that due to these issues, 40 industrial units in Khurianwala industrial estate were closed which resulted in not only a sharp decline in exports but also caused a loss of 400,000 jobs.

He said if the government resolved the issue of bank loan restructuring for the industrialists, the units would be revived and it would help push up textile exports by about $3 billion annually and produce one million employment opportunities.



He said the industrialists did not want their loans written off but they wanted to restructure them so that they could stand on their own feet and revive their units.

Dastgir suggested that the industrialists should come up with a mechanism to separate the wilful and genuine defaulters and also help determine the sustainable and unsustainable industries so that the government could facilitate them easily.

He said the government was committed to resolving all genuine issues of the textile industrialists and it had already met a number of demands including the provision of uninterrupted electricity and gas.

The meeting decided to hold a sitting in Karachi to resolve the issue of bank loans in which representatives from the textile industry, State Bank of Pakistan, National Bank of Pakistan and private banks would be invited.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 2^nd, 2016.

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