Islamabad
Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PHMA) has expressed deep concern over continued decline in textile exports, which have dropped by around 28% year-on- year and almost 9% month-on-month, reaching $1.20 billion in Feb 2023.
PHMA Zonal Chairman Naseer Butt said that apart from the global market slowdown the government is also responsible for the constant decline in textile exports because of its delay in refunds to exporters, demanding the government to immediately release all pending Sales Tax Refunds, Custom Rebate claims, DLTL claims and Withholding Tax claims to provide relief to the textile exporters so that they could focus on increasing their exports.
He said that the drop in textile exports comes during a turbulent period for textile manufacturers, where they await the refunds payment by the FBR, besides facing the issues of volatile exchange rate, high energy tariffs and climbing markup rate in the country.
He warned that sudden withdrawal of power-sector subsidies to appease the IMF was likely to further hurt Pakistan’s already declining exports. Power subsidy was due to end by June 2023 but the government withdrew it hastily before the cut-off date, he said.
PHMA Zonal chief said that Pakistan’s cotton production has dropped by 34.5% in February, which reflected the impact of last year’s floods. In this scenario, a threat is looming over the textile industry, which requires around 14 million cotton bales annually.
He said that textile industry has continued to suffer from the effects of domestic economic meltdown as well as global economic slowdown as its exports dropped for the fifth consecutive month.
