Terming the government’s move to turn down APTMA’s recommendation of waivering 4 per cent custom duty on import of raw cotton as wrong, Sr vice chairman of All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA), Zahid Mazhar has said that this line of thinking is against the interests of the country in the wake of the reduction of cotton crop of two successive years by 4 million bales each.

Removal of import duty and sales tax was imperative so that raw material is available to the industry at competitive prices. This would enable it to play its role in contributing to the employment, exports and GDP of the country. He further said that the reduction of local cotton crop by about 35 per cent in each of two successive seasons has placed extra burden on the ailing textile industry to import about 4 million bales of cotton each year to meet the consumption requirement of the spinning industry.

Mazhar reminded the government that the Federal Minister for Finance, Ishaq Dar had accepted that due to the failure of cotton crop by about 35 per cent in the previous fiscal year, the GDP has declined by about 0.5 per cent. He said these lines in his Budget speech for 2016-17. Mazhar repeated the demand for urgent measures to be taken by the Government to stop the decline in the size of the domestic cotton crop including better crop management, improving the performance of cotton research institutes adopting appropriate seed technologies and urged that the 4 per cent import duty on raw cotton be immediately removed.