Without any relief for Pakistan’s textile industry in the budget, the situation will worsen amid liquidity crunch and with global business shrinking, it will lead to closure of factories, decline in exports and large-scale unemployment, according to Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers & Exporters Association (PHMA) central chairman Chaudhry Salamat Ali.

The value-added textile export industry has strongly rejected the budget 2020-21, terming it ‘one-sided and unrealistic’, Ali said in a statement recently.

Accusing government officials of taking decisions based on the directions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Ali said the demand to restore zero-rating and proposals of textile export sector have been ignored, according to Pakistani media reports.

Exporters have demanded that the government should reconsider restoring the zero-rating benefit or slash down the percentage of goods and services tax (GST) from 17 per cent to 4 per cent.

Despite government claims during the last year’s budget that imposing 17 per cent sales tax on the textile industry would bring the domestic textile sector into the tax framework, it failed to declare in the latest budget how much amount was collected from domestic sales and whether the target was achieved, Ali added.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)

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