August 16, 2006	Wednesday	Rajab 20, 1427

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PESHAWAR, Aug 15: Planners underlying the country’s marble and granite sector’s development plan, being prepared with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), estimate that the sector’s contribution to the GDP can be raised to 2.31 per cent by 2015 from the existing level of 0.38 per cent by streamlining it on modern lines.

The plan, being put in place under the USAID funded ‘Pakistan initiative for strategic development and competitiveness’, a project aimed at increasing the competitiveness of Pakistan’s small and medium enterprises, eyes at increasing the marble and granite sector’s share under the total exports of the country from 0.16 per cent in 2004 to 4.18 per cent in 2015.

The successful implementation on the plan, hoped an official, would help the federal government raise foreign exchange of $2.44 billion through marble and granite sector-related exports in 2015, much higher than what the country earned in 2004 when its total exports of marble and granite products stood at $23 million.

The marble and granite sector-related ‘strategy working group’ — established under the USAID funded activity — has estimated that modern technology and best practices vis-a-vis extraction of marble and granite deposits by miners as part of a strategy to organize the sector on modern lines would help increase the government’s revenue from Rs2.44 billion two years ago to Rs161 billion in 2015.

It would be possible as a result of increasing the sector’s capacity to sell more in terms of square feet.

The plan envisages to increasing the sale level to 380 million square feet in 2015 against 100 million square-feet total sales recorded in 2004.

The working group has, in view of the massive deposits of marble and granite in the NWFP and Balochistan, underlined the need to exploit the country’s strategic advantage in developing stone industry and making it locally and globally competitive by reducing extraction related losses and value addition.

“Economic success of the stone industry will contribute to employment and income generation, rural development and poverty alleviation,” hopes the working group’s report.

The strategy aims at improving the value chain productivity by providing training to produce skilled manpower, upgrading prospecting/quarrying and processing technology, establishing standards for quality of products and aligning production with market needs.

In this respect, it also stresses improving market access for local manufacturers and traders, enhancing product awareness and providing testing and product related information to the market players.

According to experts and business circles, there was a tremendous scope of bringing about improvement in the marble and granite sector to take maximum advantage of the potential the country had in view of large deposits of marble and granite in the NWFP and Balochistan.

Of all the marble extracted every year some 73 per cent is lost due to aged old mining practices. The new strategy, said a source, aims at bring down the ratio of extraction related losses to about 45 per cent by 2015.

“Out of the total marble extracted every year, only three per cent is cut in square blocks for exports, however, during the process 50 per cent of the marble is lost leaving only half for exports,” said an official document.

Whereas, out of 97 of the total extracted marble about 45 per cent is lost during the cutting process, five per cent is converted into slabs and some 50 per cent is converted into tiles, of which only two per cent are exported and 98 per cent are sold in the open market at quite a low price.