GUJRAT: The manufacturers of electric fans have announced closure of factories from Saturday (tomorrow) owing to unstable prices of raw material, blockade of imported material at seaport and fluctuating value of rupee against the US dollar.

They said it had become impossible for them to quote any price of their products in the market under the prevailing volatility.

The decision to shut operations at the fan making units was made at an emergency meeting of Pakistan electric fan manufacturers association (Pefma) presided by its chairman Umair Rafique.

The participants expressed their grave concern over the recent hike in the rates of basic raw material particularly in the wake of the prolonged blockade of shipments of raw material at port as the local dealers of raw material had enhanced the prices of raw material.

They said consistent depreciation of rupee had also been a major issue in the raise of raw material prices as market was not getting stable due to which the fan makers were unable in fixing the prices of their products to the customers and fan dealers.

Usually the fan makers would sign the contracts of rates with their dealers across the country in the first two months of every year and also put orders of purchasing raw material as per their onward deals with the dealers, said a participant in the meeting and added that continuing with the production operations in these circumstances was hard.

Pefma chairman Umair Rafique while talking to Dawn said most of the major units had already reduced their productions by 50 to 70 per cent due to these conditions and only some export-based production was underway whereas the small and medium scaled units were facing big challenge to continue their businesses.

So after a detailed discussion with the members of Pefma it has been decided to shut the factories by Feb 4 until the situation improved and prices of raw material got stable.

He said the industry’s small and medium units had been facing hardship in direct import of electric steel sheet, the basic raw material for a quality fan production, as there had been an import duty of 17pc since these manufacturers neither had the capacity of documentation nor they had financial resources for direct import so they had to rely on commercial importer that would charge hefty rate from them.

Mr Rafique said Pefma would keep a close eye on the situation after which the [closure] decision might be reviewed.

There are at least 200-250 manufacturing units of electric fans in Gujrat and Gujranwala cities with at least 25,000 people employed in the sector which annually contribute export of at least $30 million to the national economy.

Published in Dawn, February 3rd, 2023