‘Ship-breakers pay more tax than steel melters’
Say processing cost has significantly increased.
KARACHI:
Ship-breaking, one of the biggest industries of Balochistan, provides employment to thousands of workers directly and hundreds of thousands of people indirectly in the country, said stakeholders of the industry in a statement on Monday.
Comparing ship-breakers with steel melters, the stakeholders said the industry also contributes revenue to the tune of billions of rupees to the federal government apart from millions of rupees to the provincial government.
The ship-breaking industry has been paying sales tax at the rate of Rs4,848 per ton whereas melters are liable to pay Rs4,800 per ton, the statement said. Hence, the ship-breaking industry is paying slightly more than the melters.
“If the electricity cost of melters has increased two-fold since 2007, which is not the factual position, our processing/cutting costs have also increased much more than their electricity cost,” they claimed.
The ship-breakers pointed out that their costs include labour wages, transportation, cutting gases, machinery/equipment maintenance and operational cost of machinery.
The ship-breakers particularly stressed that ship-breaking is not only done in Pakistan but is done worldwide and the main players in this field are many developing countries including China, India, Turkey, Spain and Bangladesh. Even USA is doing ship-breaking in a big way and reusing the steel in the steel sector.
Presently, there is consumption of about three million tons of total re-rollable material in the country, out of which the major share is still being produced by melters. Only less than 0.4 million tons re-rollable material is being supplied by the ship-breaking industry which comes to less than 20 per cent of the total consumption in the country, they added.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 24th, 2011.
Ship-breaking, one of the biggest industries of Balochistan, provides employment to thousands of workers directly and hundreds of thousands of people indirectly in the country, said stakeholders of the industry in a statement on Monday.
Comparing ship-breakers with steel melters, the stakeholders said the industry also contributes revenue to the tune of billions of rupees to the federal government apart from millions of rupees to the provincial government.
The ship-breaking industry has been paying sales tax at the rate of Rs4,848 per ton whereas melters are liable to pay Rs4,800 per ton, the statement said. Hence, the ship-breaking industry is paying slightly more than the melters.
“If the electricity cost of melters has increased two-fold since 2007, which is not the factual position, our processing/cutting costs have also increased much more than their electricity cost,” they claimed.
The ship-breakers pointed out that their costs include labour wages, transportation, cutting gases, machinery/equipment maintenance and operational cost of machinery.
The ship-breakers particularly stressed that ship-breaking is not only done in Pakistan but is done worldwide and the main players in this field are many developing countries including China, India, Turkey, Spain and Bangladesh. Even USA is doing ship-breaking in a big way and reusing the steel in the steel sector.
Presently, there is consumption of about three million tons of total re-rollable material in the country, out of which the major share is still being produced by melters. Only less than 0.4 million tons re-rollable material is being supplied by the ship-breaking industry which comes to less than 20 per cent of the total consumption in the country, they added.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 24th, 2011.