SWABI, Nov 24: Entrepreneurs of the Gadoon Amazai Industrial Estate have sought a package of incentives, saying incentives given to the estate under the SRO-517 in 1989 by the then prime minister Benazir Bhutto were withdrawn by the government of Nawaz Sharif in 1990.

The demand was made at a recent meeting organised by the Gadoon Chamber of Commerce and Industry here in the honour of Senator Ilyas Ahmad Bilour, a leader of the Progressive Businessman Forum, who visited the estate along with other industrialists in connection with the election campaign of the executive committee of the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Under the SRO-517, the federal government had exempted recognised industrial units in the Gadoon estate from custom duties and sales tax on import of raw materials.

Speaking on the occasion, Ilyas Bilour regretted that some industrialists left the Gadoon estate after the incentives were withdrawn. He appreciated the industrialists who did not close down their units despite facing numerous problems.

Answering a question, he rejected a government claim that $4 billion had been invested in the NWFP industrial sector during the last eight years. About the law and order problem, he said it had created a lot of problems for NWFP industrialists. He alleged that the government had created the situation to weaken the province and the tribal region.

He said several steps had been taken to strengthen the industrial sector in Punjab but the NWFP had been ignored and kept backward through a conspiracy. “We cannot even think about facilities provided to the Punjab industry.”

SCCI president Liaqat Ahmad Khan said Gadoon, Jamrud and Risalpur industrial estates should be included in the Reconstruction Opportunity Zone.

Ghulam Sarwar Khan Mohmand, a former president of the SCCI, said the withdrawal of incentives had destroyed the Gadoon estate.