November 14, 2001	Wednesday	Shaba’an 27, 1422

KARACHI, Nov 13: The Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) chairman Tariq Ikram on Tuesday said that the country was likely to suffer up to $2 billion losses on account of post-Sept 11 adverse developments which are taking heavy toll.

Addressing the members of All Pakistan Textile Mills Association at the Aptma House, the EPB chief brushed aside the general notion that these developments would result in economic bonanza for the country.

“I would say that economic concessions being given by the Western world to Pakistan may only be sufficient to cover our losses sustained in post-Sept 11 situation and in no way would be a bonanza,” he stressed.

Tariq Ikram admitted that a mistake had been committed at the official level for projecting that ‘business as usual’ was going on in Pakistan during post-Sept 11 incident.

He said this sent a wrong message to the US government which made its decisions on merit based on ground realities. But the country is likely to suffer up to $2bn on account of various negative developments which surfaced after September 11.

“Though our share in total US trade volume is of very negligible amount but still it matters a lot when it comes to textiles which is a main stay of our economy and contributes over 60 per cent in exports,” he added.

Consequently, a one per cent fall in textile exports in October, he said, was enough to alarm “us even if entire exports have registered two per cent growth over the last year”.

He said only time would tell how much impact would be on total exports of the orders received or cancelled during Sept to Nov, but the least one could do was keep trying to match the pace of exports with those of last year.

The EPB chief said in the post-Sept 11 there had been a dip in consumers’ buying and spending which was one of the factors for lower demand from the West.

Mr Tariq said several measures were taken by the government to minimize the negative impact on the economy. As foreign buyers stopped coming to Pakistan, he said, the EPB arranged 62 trade delegations some of whom have already left and others are on their way.

Similarly, he said exhibitions and fairs with renewed guidelines would be held as usual and warehousing schemes were being launched so that exporters could establish warehouses in Europe, US and Africa for prompt delivery of goods to the customers.

Referring to various issues raised by Aptma chairman Nadeem Maqbool, the EPB chief said that Rs11 billion would be disbursed on account of duty drawback and sales tax refund by December.

He said this would give liquidity relief to exporters who had to meet their new export orders.