PTEA chairman says export package not enough

Believes solving financial issues should be govt’s top priority

FAISALABAD: Without addressing the country’s financial issues, the recently announced export package would prove ineffective for the textile sector, said Pakistan Textile Exporters Association (PTEA) Chairman Ajmal Farooq on Monday.

Previously, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced a Trade Enhancement Package worth Rs180 billion, under which a total of Rs20 billion will be spent on the development of the export sector over the next three years.

Speaking in Faisalabad, the PTEA chairman said the textile exporters are badly deprived of liquidity as a major portion of their working capital has been blocked in the refund cycle.

“The extreme cash flow crunch is gradually eroding the biggest job providing sector in the country,” he said. “It has severely impaired the industry and thus exports have declined.”

He said that meeting targets now was unreal. “Under such extreme financial stress, achieving the target to increase the country’s exports by Rs2-3 billion by June 2018 appears to be impossible.” he said.

Farooq also said with the short releases of funds, half of the incentives of the Textile Policy (2009-14) are still yet to be disbursed. Moreover, a huge amount of claims of incentive schemes under existing Textile Policy (2014-19) are also unpaid, according to him.

Meanwhile, PTEA Group Leader Ahmad Kamal was of the view that the export industry is the lifeline of the economy and a continuous drop in exports would spell high amount of trouble.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 4^th, 2017.

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