Businessmen plan to suspend operations from next week in Karachi SITE

Will also stage protest in front of Governor House on Tuesday

KARACHI: Businessmen in the SITE industrial area have threatened to suspend business operations from Monday to protest the absence of gas for factories.

They agreed on the suspension of work in a meeting at the SITE Industrial Association office where they also planned to stage a protest outside the Governor House on Tuesday.

“SITE, being the largest industrial area of Karachi which caters to 52% of Pakistan’s exports and contributes 64% to total tax revenues of the country, is being neglected by public gas utilities,” remarked SITE Association of Industry President Saleem Parekh in a statement.

Despite lodging complaints at federal and provincial levels, both the governments seemed to be least concerned about protecting employment, exports and tax revenues of the city and the province, he said.

“Low gas pressure is equivalent to having no gas at all,” he lamented.

Media and Publication Committee Chairman Sanaullah Abdullah termed gas crisis a U-turn from the government’s policy of industrialisation, export-led growth and development of import-substitution industry.

Sharing details, he said in 33 out of 45 days, there was extremely low gas pressure whereas in the remaining 12 days, there was complete gas load-shedding in the SITE area. SITE industries lose about Rs2.5 billion daily due to what he called mismanagement by the gas utility.

“On the one hand, the government is permitting recovery of bulk unaccounted for gas (UFG) and high fixed rate of return to gas utilities while on the other hand, gas utilities’ mismanagement is resulting in heavy losses to the exchequer in the shape of foreign exchange and tax revenue loss,” Parekh said.

He expressed concern over the exporters missing orders from overseas and being unable to meet their year-end export commitments. This would further drive down the country’s exports which had already been flat for the past five months, despite rupee depreciation and the incentives announced by the government, he stated.



“Industrialists of Karachi are unable to understand why the Sindh government is not keen to fight for Sindh’s right under Article 158,” argued Parekh.

Continuing his argument, he announced that the SITE Association had requested the federal finance minister to provide subsidy to Sindh of the size similar to that provided to Punjab on re-gasified liquefied natural gas ie on the weighted average mix. Sindh only received subsidy on 50 million cubic feet of RLNG per day (mmcfd) whereas Punjab was enjoying a subsidy for 200 mmcfd, he said.