PTEA hails release of tax refund claims

Association calls move a ‘positive step’ towards export promotion.

FAISALABAD: The Pakistan Textile Exporters Association (PTEA) has hailed the release of Rs2 billion in funds for drawbacks on local taxes and levies (DLTL), the export financing scheme and mark-up rates schemes and incentives announced in the Textile Policy (2009-14), and has termed it a positive step towards export promotion.

In a press statement issued here today, PTEA Chairman Asghar Ali and Vice Chairman Muhammad welcomed the government’s decision and demanded more funds for the payment of pending DLTL claims. They said that different schemes under the Textile Policy, including the Textile Investment Support Fund, drawback of local taxes, refund of past research and development claims and the Export Financing Scheme, were initiated in 2009 to boost textile exports.

“While encompassing a broad-based agenda – including technology up gradation, infrastructure development, skill development, and fiscal measures for the ailing textile industry – along with the removal of regulatory bottlenecks, the government has left the agenda half-achieved with the blockage of refund claims,” they said.

“Billions of rupees of textile exporters’ [money] were stuck up in the DLTL refund regime, creating a liquidity crunch,” they claimed.

However, they complained that the government has earmarked Rs7.5 billion in the budget for fiscal 2013 for the implementation of different initiatives under the textile policy, but released only Rs2 billion.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2013.

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