KARACHI
Business leaders appealed to Prime Minister Imran Khan and his aides to immediately restore gas supply to all industrial zones of Karachi whose gas supply remains suspended for the last over 100 days.
Chairman Businessmen Group (BMG) Zubair Motiwala, Vice Chairman BMG & Chairman Pakistan Apparel Forum Jawed Bilwani and President Karachi Chamber Muhammad Idrees have stressed that the federal government must save its repute by putting an end to the discriminatory treatment being suffered by the metropolis.
They said that gas suspension has not only aggravated miseries for the business community and the Karachiites but has also dented the government’s efforts to ensure ease of doing business.
Addressing a presser here at Karachi Chamber of Commerce & Industry (KCCI) on Monday, they urged that in order to revive the industrial activities, Sindh’s gas has to be returned to the province as it was highly unfair to keep the industries of Karachi deprived of Sindh’s own gas resources.
They said that the industries of Karachi were deeply shocked and totally disappointed with the government for neglecting and ignoring the repeated appeals and press releases over looming gas/ RLNG crises and remaining indecisive in the burning matter for the last more than 100 days.
Motiwala said that the government’s promises and commitments to assure supply of gas to export industries appear to be an eyewash and a mere lip-service. It was highly unfair to deprive Karachi from Gas/ RLNG as this city, being the textile and industrial hub of Pakistan, alone contributes 68 percent revenue to the national exchequer and 54 percent to national exports while 52 percent of textile exports also take place from Karachi.
“Yet this matchless contribution is not being taken into consideration and Karachi continues to undergo discrimination that has led to causing severe production losses of more than 66 percent due to reduced or no supply of gas. The inequitable conduct and discriminatory treatment with Karachi were totally unconstitutional hence intolerable and highly deplorable”, he said while fearing that the discriminatory actions/ policy towards Karachi will not only cause the industry to cripple but would also tarnish the vision of prime minister.
Motiwala stressed that a quantum of 211mmcfd gas, which was erroneously allocated to SNGPL in the past and the same has also been recognized by SAPM Gas and DG Gas, needs to be immediately returned to SSGCL. “Last year, the industry of Karachi entered into an agreement with the Ministry of Energy and Ministry Commerce to purchase extra quantities of gas at higher price for a period of five months to match the demand. However, we were denied of the same this year due to lack of planning.”
Chairman Pakistan Apparel Forum Jawed Bilwani mentioned that Prime Minister’s excellent policy pertaining to Long Term Financing Facility (LTFF) encouraged industrialists to invest more than US$3 billion on purchase of machineries/ equipment which was likely to promote industrialization but this policy will be wasted due to unavailability and unjustified distribution of gas.
Bilwani said that the value-added textile export industries were saddened over such unwelcoming act and behavior of the Federal Government.
Idrees opined that instead of pursuing the pick & choose strategy, gas has to be supplied without any differentiation to all the industries including general, SMEs and export-oriented industries as they all go hand-in-hand. The government has to realise that the general industries were an integral part of the value chain for exports which drive the economy.
