LAHORE - Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PHMA) Chairman Adil Butt has expressed deep concern over decline in textile exports, which have decreased by 1.98 percent during the first eleven months of the current fiscal, widening trade deficit by 42.12 percent or about $30 billion as compared to $21.1 billion deficit of same period of last fiscal year.

He said that the govt is responsible for the constant decline in textile exports because of its delay in refunds to exporters, demanding the government to immediately release all pending Sales Tax Refunds, Custom Rebate claims, DLTL claims and Withholding Tax claims to provide relief to the textile exporters so that they could focus on increasing their exports.

He said that the drop in textile exports comes during a turbulent period for textile manufacturers, where they await the promised incentives by the government, including disbursement of the Rs180b export package and recovery of sales tax refunds.

He said that the PBS data revealed declining textile exports across all major categories, including towels down 18.1pc YoY, cotton cloth down 15.7pc YoY, bed wear down 15.5pc YoY, readymade garments down 7.2pc YoY and cotton yarn down 3.1pc YoY. He said that the government is no more business-friendly, which it once claimed to be, as the country’s exports are not among the government’s priorities and even the textile ministry is still being run without a minister.

He said that textile industry had proposed a number of measures for the FY18 budget which was not implemented by the government. In fact, the government increased the turnover tax from 1pc to 1.25pc and sales tax on retail sales was increased from 5pc to 6pc. The government also raised the minimum wage by Rs1000 to Rs15000.

He said the Rs180 billion package, which was announced in January 2017, could go some way in making the textile sector competitive internationally. However, five months after the announcement of the package, only Rs4 billion has so far been released by the government versus claims of Rs24 billion, he added.

Quoting the data, he said that textile exports during July-May (2016-17) were recorded at $11,234.885 million compared to the exports of $11,461.497 million recorded during July-May (2015-16). The textile products that contributed in the negative growth included cotton yarn, the trade of which decreased by 3.64 percent by going down from the exports of $1,176.999 million last year to $1,134.191 million during the current year. The exports of cotton cloth also decreased from $2,065.794 million to $1,945.670 million, showing negative growth of 5.81 percent while the exports of raw cotton decreased by 47.14 percent, from $75.996 million to $40.169 million. The exports of yarn (other than cotton yarn) decreased by 27.32 percent by falling from $30.648 million to $22.274 million while the exports of knitwear decreased by 1.84 percent from $2,146.744 million to $2,107.612 million.

Exports of towels decreased from $739.986 million to $704.702 million, a decline of 4.77 million while the exports of arts, silk and synthetic textile decreased by 32.99 percent, from $267.035 million last year to $259.127 million during the ongoing fiscal year.