Cotton yarn: Textile sector reiterates demand for increase in regulatory duty-Texglobe

MULTAN (May 25 2010): Value-added textile sector has reiterated its demand for increasing the regulatory duty on cotton yarn from 15 to 30 percent and rejected the Cabinet committee on textile comprising the State Minister for Economic Affairs, Hina Rabbani Khar, Defence Minister and former minister for trade Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar and Advisor to Prime Minister on Finance describing it partial and well-wisher of spinners.

VTF co-ordinator for South zone Syed Muhammad Aasim Shah said that Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani had announced to convene a meeting of all stakeholders on May 25 but APTMA arranged a meeting with Prime Minister exclusively with the help of Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, which is not fair.

In a press statement Syed Aasim Shah said that meeting of all stakeholders must be convened at the earliest to yank the value- added industry from the disaster and distress. He said that spinners had dumped their stocks to create an artificial scarcity of yarn in the market to fleece the consumers and they are waiting for waiving the regulatory duty so that they could export maximum stock abroad.

Refuting the fabricated statements and figures of spinners, Assim Shah said the government should not be misled by the propaganda of the spinning sector aiming at mutilating the ground realities. He said that, so far, the yarn shortage in the country has taken a great toll on economy in the form of steep decline in exports owing to the closure of hundreds of units of value added textile industry leaving millions of people jobless.

With every passing day the problem is getting deeper and spinning sector is presenting rosy picture to the Government by concealing the actual figures, he said. He said "It will be interested to note that globally the production of cotton has decrease by 5 percent.

To counter the situation created by reduced production many countries like India has banned the export of cotton and yarn to meet their domestic consumption of value added sector. On the contrary if we have looked over the trend of production of cotton and yarn and its export, a dangerous behaviour is observed where the domestic demand is completely ignored irrespective of its destructive effects on our value added industry which is indeed the centre of gravity for whole the textile and apparel sector." He informed that as far as the claim of spinner is concerned that number of spinning units are closed owing to the crisis in this sector is baseless. He said that till April 2010, there is an increase of 29pc in the export of yarn as compared to the same period of preceding year. Similarly, t cotton export record an unprecedented increase of 116 percent till April 2010 than the same period of yesteryear on export price of 55 cents while the import price is 89 cents. He termed this phenomenon a great loss of value resources as the export of cotton and yarn benefited our competitor countries instead which should have been diverted to our value added textile sector, which in turn have earned valuable foreign exchange for our country. The current production capacity is 172,000 MT per month, which is 2,064,000 MT per annum while it is wrongly claimed by the spinners that the production is 2,400,000. He said spinning sector must play responsible role in the stability of the country.

He said "In addition to the advertisements in the leading print media addressed to the President, Prime Minister Commerce & Textile Minister, we have held series of press conferences last week of October to till date, and will continue our efforts in days to come. "He further added that just to protect our industrial sector in the larger interest of the country we have attended various meetings on different forums like TDAP Karachi; MINTEX Islamabad; Commerce Ministry; National Assembly Standing Committee on Textile; Senate Standing Committee on Textile; as well as several meetings with Finance Minister, Textile Minister, Governor Punjab etc since October, 2009 up-to-date.

He requested to the Prime Minister that the Cabinet Committee on Textile should include neutral persons who are neither associated with spinners nor with the value-added textile sector for an unbiased review and decision of this burning issue which will be a most practical step to resolve the issue.

He said that in view of the gravest ever crisis and most critical scenario of the value-added textile sector, it is sincerely appealed to the Prime Minister not to be swayed by the spinners' rhetoric which is based on wrong and unjustified assumptions and statistics, but seriously review the ground realities from which it will be proved that the value-added textile sector's case is based on firm, coherent and documented facts and statistics, which cannot be denied.