ISLAMABAD: The government hasn’t changed trade regime with India despite strains in the relationship between the two countries, Commerce Minister Khurram Dastgir told Senate Standing Committee on Textile Industry on Thursday.

He was speaking in response to the issue raised by chairman of the committee Senator Mohsin Aziz that a huge quantity of raw cotton has been stopped at the Karachi port. The minister said the government has not issued any notification in this regard.

However, Mr Dastgir said the government has put restriction of importing 500,000 cotton bales in a year through Wagah border while there was not any such restriction on Karachi port.

Mr Aziz said the government should instead ban value-added products from the neighbouring country in a bid to protect the local textile industry.

The meeting was informed that the local textile industry was in a shambles and its exports were in decline due to a number of issues, including high prices of gas and electricity, high tariff on import of input materials for industries, restructuring of loans with banks and revival of sick units.

Mian Lateef of the Chenab Group, which owns ChenOne fashion stores, informed the committee that 40 industries in Khurrianwala industrial estate have been closed. As a result, the industrial sector’s exports have fallen and 400,000 jobs have been lost.

He said that if the government resolves the issue of restructuring of bank loans of these industrialists, the units would be revived and it would help surge textile exports by about $3 billion annually and create one million jobs. “The industrialists don’t want their loans written off. They want to restructure the loans so that they could stand on their own feet and revive their industries,” he said.

Mr Dastgir said industrialists should come up with a mechanism to separate the wilful and non-wilful defaulters and also determine the sustainable and unsustainable industries so that the government could facilitate them easily.

He said the government was committed to resolve all the genuine issues of the textile industrialists and it had already fulfilled a number of demands of the industrialists including provision of uninterrupted electricity and gas to the industry.

It was decided that a meeting would be held in Karachi to resolve the issue of banking sector with the textile industry in which representatives from the textile industry, the State Bank of Pakistan, National Bank of Pakistan and private banks would be invited.

Senator Nehal Hashmi pointed out that some industrialists were named in the Exit Control List (ECL) and they were not even allowed to go abroad and meet their clients. The committee recommended excluding their names from the ECL.

Senators Khushbakht Shujaat, Hamza, Mir Nematullah Zehri, chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue and other officials of the textile ministry also attended.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2016