KARACHI, Dec 31: The prolonged power and gas outages throughout the country were causing havoc to the industry, which has to go on self-generation for 12 to 18 hours a day. The self-generation is made at a cost double that of power supplied through national grid system, industry sources said.

The industries, faced with acute gas and power shortage, are on the verge of total collapse as they could not meet their export orders. They are also unable to absorb higher cost of self-generation, they added.

The Faisalabad exporters of value-added textiles have approached the Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers Association (PHMA) to take the matter with authorities for early solution of power and gas problem.

They claimed that for over a period of one month there had been prolonged power outages and gas supply had been totally stopped resulting in colossal losses to the industry.

In their plea with the PHMA chairman Jawed Bilwani Faisalabad’s manufacturers-cum-exporters pointed out that since over a month they are running units on self-generation, which has exhausted their liquidity.

The exporters said it was a national loss because losing of export orders or shutting down units will only aggravate balance of payment position and will create massive unemployment.

But the most depressing of all the developments, they added, is the indifferent attitude of the government, which is least interested in problems related to trade and industry, Mr Bilwani quoted business leaders from Faisalabad.

The PHMA chief said that industries in Karachi were also confronted with similar situation and has to go for costly self-generation. The gas is also being not supplied to industries and this has crippled operation of the textile processing units.

He said that the total loss during last one month came to around $1 billion in exports and if the situation was not corrected immediately the country would suffer huge losses in exports and industry shutdowns.

He said that due to prolonged power and gas outages the industry has to largely depend on self generation, which has caused fast depreciation of these generators. The repair and replacement cost for these generators have added further to the cost for the industry.

The PHMA chairman said that with tough competition in the recession-hit world market products from Pakistan were fast losing their share because neighbouring countries like India and China have already enhanced incentives for their exporters.