APTMA now laments high cost of electricity

Chairman says spindles shutting down over increasing cost of doing business

KARACHI: Over ‘one million spindles’ capacity has been closed down in the country during the last three and a half months primarily because of the unbearable high cost of doing business, said All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) Chairman Tariq Saud.

“All these spindles were predominantly producing exportable goods,” said Saud in a statement on Thursday.

“The major cause of closure is the unaffordable cost of energy; particularly the exorbitant and unjustified burden of Rs3.63 per unit surcharges included in the electricity bills that have been enforced on the industry to deal with the continuous inefficiency of the power sector,” he said.

“Such an unjustified addition of surcharges has escalated the cost of electricity to Rs14 per unit against regional competitors, who are paying less than Rs9 per unit,” he deplored.

He said because of such unprecedented losses, majority of the textile mills were unable to pay monthly electricity bills and were falling one after the other. He anticipated further mills to shut down soon when they would receive the hefty monthly bills by November 20, 2015 onwards.

“Closing down one million spindles means more than one million unsold cotton bales, a loss of jobs and production losses,” he said further.

He questioned as to why the government instead of improving efficiency of the power sector was bent on closing the industry through the illegal levy of surcharges on Nepra-determined tariff of RS9.10 per unit for the industrial customers.

Furthermore, he said the whole supply chain would get disrupted amidst worldwide recession and fall of commodity prices, causing problems for local industry to compete internationally. “There is an immediate need to arrest the free fall of basic textile exports by lessening the high cost of doing business of this premium industry.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2015.

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