August 13, 2006	Sunday	Rajab 17, 1427

KARACHI, Aug 12: As a mark of protest leading textile bodies are dissociating themselves from the Zubair Motiwala committee. They feel the textile package favours a few textile tycoons at the cost of majority of small and medium sized manufacturers.

The Pakistan Bedwear Exporters Association (PBEA) and the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) have taken the initiative in this regard.

In a statement here on Saturday, PBEA chairman Shabir Ahmed said the committee had in fact damaged the entire textile industry by proposing discriminatory research and development (R&D) support.

He alleged that the committee chairman acted selfishly and only protected his own interest at the cost of other textile ancillary industries.

Mr Shabir said the fact that five per cent R&D was only being given to processing units of the home textile sector was a sufficient proof that Zubair Motiwala, who owned his processing unit, would benefit out of this support. He said further that Mr Motiwala had no experience in home textile and in fact was not an exporter of these products.

The PBEA chief also demanded the withdrawal of SRO No. 803(I)/2006 issued on August 4, 2006 by the ministry of commerce, as it has a number of discrepancies. He pointed out that the SRO included such countries for availing the R&D support where home textiles were not exported at all.

He apprehended that this would only encourage the misuse of R&D, as fake and paper exports would be shown to these countries. The PBEA chairman reiterated his demand that weaving and stitching sectors of home textile should be included in the SRO for availing the five per cent R&D support.

Similarly, a strong lobby in Aptma is also demanding the withdrawal from the Zubair Motiwala committee, as the spinning sector has also been totally ignored in the textile package.

Aptma vice-chairman Mushtaq Vohra told Dawn that there was a strong resentment amongst his members who felt betrayed by the committee. He said yarn was a basic raw material for the entire textile industry. “How could the industry sustain if yarn production runs into troubles owing to any reason?” he asked.

Mr Vohra said: “The spinning industry is facing financial crisis and may default on bank loans. Regional countries are giving subsidies to their industry and we can not compete with them in the world market.”

Citing an example, he said there were five million spindles in Bangladesh where cotton was not grown at all. This showed that Bangladesh’s textile industry had great scope and bright future, he added. Pakistan has around 12 million spindles.

Rafiq Godil, central executive committee member of the Pakistan Knitwear Exporters Association, said unfortunately all members on the Zubair Motiwala committee were non-exporters and mostly belonged to the processing industry.

He said this was not for the first time Mr Motiwala protected his own interest. A similar incident also took place in the past when he headed another committee for allowing exemption of sales tax on utility bills to the export-oriented industry.

While recalling some of the facts, Mr Godil said instead of giving exemption across the board even in this case, he fixed a benchmark of Rs1 million for qualifying to get sales tax exemption on utility (power) bills.

He alleged that by doing so Mr Motiwala cleverly managed to exclude most of the export sectors from this facility and indirectly included the processing industry which normally had large power bills.

However, he said this might have benefited processors at the cost of export-oriented industry that normally had annual power bills less than Rs1 million, but in the process Mr Motiwala damaged country’s exports, as a large number small and medium sized value-added industries such as garments and hosiery had closed down in the process so far.