‘Textile industry to close down voluntarily’

LAHORE: All Pakistan Textile Mills Association Chairman S. M. Tanveer has said that a meeting of the general body of Association has decided to close down the textile industry of Pakistan voluntarily.
“An emergent general body meeting has deliberated on the adverse circumstances and found it unfeasible to incur losses by operating mills partially,” he added. He said the member mills had decided on their own to put their operations off voluntarily because of the viability issue. “We do not want confrontation with the government; therefore, we are closing down mills voluntarily,” he said.
The cost of doing business in textile industry has hit through the roof. Meanwhile, the burden of incidental taxes, provincial cess, system inefficiencies and punitive withholding tax regime has added fuel to the fire. “Thus, the business of textile industry has become unviable in Pakistan,” he said.
He said the government had not brought the unorganised sectors into tax net and billing the textile industry. All these punitive measures had hit the sustainability of textile industry in Pakistan. Furthermore, he said, it was also an irony that the federal government had imposed a surcharge of Rs3.60 per unit to mitigate the positive impact of tariff reduction by National Electric Power Regulatory Authority. “The textile industry is unable to bear this burden despite operating on independent feeders with no line losses and theft and 100 percent payment of bills,” he pointed out. He said the regional competitors were paying less than 10 cent against 14.50 cent electricity tariff in Pakistan. Majority of the mills are already operating partially because of energy mismatch at present, he said, adding that the textile millers from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan and Karachi had decided to close down operations voluntarily and lay off millions of workers, as they had nothing to offer to their international buyers against the regional competitors.