Foreign buyers scared of visiting Pakistan: APTA

LAHORE: Foreign buyers are reluctant to visit Pakistan due to the law and order situation in the country and the export target of $19.2 billion, with the current cost of doing business, will not be possible to achieve, observed the All Pakistan Textile Association (APTA) members in a meeting held on Monday.

According to APTA Chairman Adil Mehmood, exporters have to travel to Dubai, Hong Kong, UK and other countries to meet importers/buyers. He said that in the meeting all the chairmen of committees refuted the government policies and declared it anti-export and anti-employment.

“Our exports will increase only if the government of Pakistan gives matching incentives as given by India, China and Bangladesh regarding utility charges, mark-up, transport, packing material,” he said adding that raw material particularly cotton scenario is very alarming as the current year’s new crop of cotton is being sold at Rs 3500 per maund against last year’s price of Rs 2300 per maund, giving a big blow to spinning industry.

He said that because of this reason, raw cotton will be exported giving all the benefits of textile trade to China, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

He claimed that the government totally ignored the textile spinning industry while announcing incentives to the rest of the sector and has given R&D rebate to other sectors of textiles, whereas maximum employment and revenues are paid by the spinning sector. “It is very clear that if spinning shuts down, all down-stream textile industries will also be affected,” Mr Mehmood said.

Economic advisors of the government are not taking it seriously whereas the business community is taking it as writing-on-the wall. He said that the government must realise that what could happen if spinning sector shuts down even partially by 50 to 60 percent. He said that in such situation, the millers would have to import yarn worth millions of dollars to run the value-added sector in addition to unemployment of 500,000 workers, huge bank defaults and massive decrease in tax/revenue collections.

“Under the given circumstances, one can easily think about the export target, GDP growth rate, budgetary deficit, poverty elevation, developmental funds, education, health etc.,” he said.