KARACHI, June 22: The leather garments exporters have urged the Ministry of Commerce to immediately impose ban on export of all categories of raw hides and skins to ensure their availability to domestic value-added leather industry.

In a statement issued on Friday, the patron-in-chief of Pakistan Leather Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association, Fawad Ijaz Khan, said though there was a duty of 20 per cent on export of raw and wet blue hides and skins, exporters unfortunately manage to export a large quantity on wrong declaration.

He further said that a huge quantity of wet blue leather is being exported on declaring it crust leather for which the exporters do not have to pay 20 per cent export duty.

The association, he said, had assisted the customs authorities in detecting some cases where exporters made attempts to export wet blue hides and skins through wrong declaration.

The customs authorities, upon physical examination, found that wet blue hides and skins were being exported under the garb of crust leather, but still a large number of containers go undetected, he added.

In order to check the practice of misdeclaration, he said the Ministry of Commerce has been urged to impose a ban on export of leather till crust stage.

Mr Fawad said that in India there was an export duty of 60 per cent till the crust stage of leather which helps check wrong declaration at the customs stage.

He urged the government to encourage export of finished leather and value-added products, like leather garments, leather goods, footwear and gloves rather than allow export of raw material.

He said that the association had already taken up the matter with the ministry to ban export of live animals and take strict measures to prevent their smuggling which is causing shortage of raw hides and skins.

Mr Fawad said that there was already a massive decline of 27.59 per cent in export of leather garments during May 2012 as compared to last year.