‘Local manufacturers must invest in CPEC’

LAHORE: The Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) in its budget proposals has demanded that local manufacturers should be encouraged to invest in China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) porojects.

LCCI President Sheikh Muhammad Arshad, Senior Vice President Almas Hyder and Vice President Nasir Saeed said that the projects such as CPEC have the capacity to stimulate the local economy by increasing the demand for the locally-manufactured goods.

“Such increase in demand will not only allow full utilisation of the existing manufacturing potential, but will also encourage the manufacturers to increase their capacity.”

They said that this will generate the much-needed employment opportunities and will also contribute a sizeable amount of revenue to the national exchequer.

The LCCI officials lamented that unfortunately, the local manufacturers are facing quite the opposite situation, as the government, through CGO No 3 of 2015, had effectively excluded the locally-produced goods from all power projects above 25MW.

“It withdrew the concessionary Customs duty from raw materials for the industry covered under SRO 565. In most of the cases, import duty on raw materials was increased from 10 percent to 20 percent, which resulted in higher raw materials cost for the local manufacturers,” they said.

Declaring zero percent Customs duty (Serial No 12 of Fifth Schedule) and sales tax (Serial No 7 of Table 3 Sixth Schedule) on the import of machinery, equipment and spare parts had made it impossible for the local manufacturers to benefit from the huge economic activity CPEC is expected to generate.