LAHORE, Jan 3: The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) has expressed the apprehension that electricity and gas loadsheding will result in the fall of production and exports and compound the economic crisis.

An APTMA spokesman said that contrary to the ECC decision to accord priority to the textile industry on account of its contribution to the country export receipts, the SNGPL had disconnected gas supply to textile mills employing 40 per cent of workforce of the industrial sector. He said the textile industry had been closed for the last about one month due to gas disconnection.

Around 70 per cent of the textile industry is dependent on gas-based power generation. To add to the woes on account of gas starvation, the textile industry has been deprived of electricity for up to 15 hours per day, bringing 40 per cent industrial capacity in Punjab and the NWFP to close down.

The spokesman said that a month’s closure for the textile industry meant a loss of one billion dollar every month to foreign exchange receipts.

Revenue earnings would suffer likewise, as would the country’s agriculture, because the textile industry was the principal, rather sole purchaser of country’s leading cash crop, he said.

The textile and agriculture together is the mainstay of the economy. It is high time that broad-based measures are taken on a war-footing on a consultative basis with the federal minister textile industry, federal finance advisor, the SBP governor, utility supply companies, leaders of the textile industry and other stakeholders on board.