Blocked tax refunds: Apparel exporters decry liquidity crunch

Say global buyers sought discount after export package

KARACHI: The Pakistan Apparel Forum has expressed concern over the blocking of exporters’ tax refund payments and urged the federal government to immediately release the claims.

“A decline in textile exports in general and garments in particular is a big concern. The government should immediately release all pending sales tax refund, customs rebate and other claims to provide relief to textile exporters so that they could focus on increasing their exports,” Chairman Muhammad Jawed Bilwani said in a statement.

Quoting statistics for January 2017, Bilwani said knitwear exports fell 3.44%, readymade garment shipments dropped 3.60% and exports of all textile products decreased 1.30% compared with January 2016.

In seven months (July-January) of financial year 2016-17, total textile exports fell 1.54% over the corresponding period of previous year.

In the seven months of 2010-11, textile exports had been recorded at $7.45 billion and these stood at $7.34 billion in Jul-Jan FY17, which highlights that the exports are at a complete standstill.

The main reason behind the declining trend was tough competition with neighbouring countries due to ever-increasing cost of production and persistent liquidity crunch, Bilwani said.

Commenting on the recently announced export package, he decried that the package was announced a day before German fair Heimtextil kicked off on January 10 due to which foreign buyers immediately demanded more discounts from the exporters of home textiles. The exporters were granted 6% rebate under the package.

Unwillingly, the exporters had to give approximately 3% discount to keep the buyers happy.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 26^th, 2017.

Like Business on Facebook, follow @TribuneBiz on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.