KARACHI, March 26: Pakistan Tanners Association (PTA) has opposed the demand of imposing ban or fixing 20 per cent duty on export of wet blue leather and termed it contrary to the interest of leather industry as a whole. In a statement issued on Saturday, chairman PTA Khawaja M Yousuf said that any kind of restriction on export of wet blue leather will not be in the interest of leather sector in present scenario. In support of his demand, he said that export leather garments as was being claimed to be on decline by 28 per cent during July-Dec 2004 while the actual decline in exports of garments is 21 per cent for this period as per recently released statistics of Federal Bureau of Statistics. He said it was important that actual causes for the decline need to be determined as the real reasons are quite different rather than lack of availability of leather domestically.

Similarly, he said export of leather gloves has shown remarkable increase from $33 million to $60 million an increase by 82.86 per cent during July-Dec 2004 period compared to the corresponding period of 2003, as per statistical data of the FBS.

Khawaja M Yousuf said export of wet blue hides and skins are just around 4 per cent of the leather export i.e. less than 2 per cent of total leather sector exports, while decline in exports of leather garments is only 21pc.

It would reveal from the details of wet blue exports that the items which are used in leather garments are minimum i.e. to say split leathers are not normally used in leather garments manufacturing in the country. It appears that the figures of wet blue leather contains 50pc split leather.

He said that many tanners including small and medium size are importing raw hides and skins from other countries in big volumes and the same are ultimately used for production of leather garments, gloves linings and one portion of wet blue is re-exported which cannot be sold easily in domestic market.