Muhammad Irfan Moton, chairman of the association, said that at the first meeting of the reconstituted cabinet, the newly-elected Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf has suggested curtailment of gas supplies to the industry amid providing 28,000 tons of furnace oil to the power producers to improve the supply, it said.

“It is beyond understanding that why the government is trying to hit the industrial sector,” he said, suggesting that the government should manage power outages through arranging furnace oil rather than cutting gas supply to the industry.

He said that closing down the productive sector of the economy would lead to further unemployment and exports loss to the country, the statement said.

“The government should plug loopholes of theft, corruption and revamp the closed plants.”

Moton criticised the government for not taking the business community into confidence on the issue. The industries were already operating below capacity that resulted in losing exports by 30 percent in the outgoing fiscal year 2011/12, besides suffering heavy losses due to the short supply of energy and reduction in gas pressure to the minimum level, he added.

The unwise policy will have a crippling effect on industries that will have no other option, but to close down their factories. This may result in increase in unemployment and short supply of goods and services, increasing inflation, he added.