LAHORE – Around one dozen industrial associations have warned the government of more industrial closures in Punjab if it fails to stop power outages and restore supply of gas to the industry.
Business leaders from a number of trade and industrial associations including Lahore Township Industrial Association, Ferozepur Road Industrial Association, Katarbund Road Industrial Association, Kahna Kacha Industrial Association, Anjuman-e-Tajiran Pakistan, Qoumi Tajir Ittehad, Anjuman-e-Tajran Badami Bagh Auto Market, Township Traders Association, Pakistan Auto Parts Manufacturers and Exporters Association, Anjuman-e-Tajran Urdu Bazar, and Brandreth Road Traders Association said this during their meeting with the LCCI office-bearers.
They said that the government would not be able to control the situation triggered by the demonstrations and strikes called by the angry industrial workers against their retrenchments as a result of gas suspension and power outages.
“Industrial productions had already gone down by fifty percent in the province of Punjab only because of gas and electricity suspension and the remaining is paying a very high cost for keeping the industry wheel on the run.”
They said that the situation today has reached the point that the international donors have started showing their reluctance in rescheduling Pakistan loans.
They said that the industry needs a continuous supply of electricity to complete the export orders well within the given timeframe but only because of the shortage of electricity the exports are not up to the mark.
They said that Pakistan had already lost a number of international markets while the condition of both local and foreign investment is also precarious. He said that cheaper and uninterrupted power supply is only way to achieve economic targets set for the year 2013 but neither the government is sharing its future plans to this regard nor paying any heed to the difficulties being faced by the trade and industry in Punjab.
They said that it is astonishing that on the one hand the government circles were talking of economic stability in 2013 while on the other hand they were not sharing any kind of roadmap to achieve this goal.
The LCCI President Farooq Iftikhar feared a surge in street crimes, saying that law and order situation is bound to aggravate in the coming days as repeated power outages in the industrial estates is jacking up the graph of unemployment  and is particularly hitting hard the daily wagers.
He said that the most of industrial units had reduced their working to single six-hour shift from the previous three shifts system. This had led to increased level of raw-material wastage leaving production process non-profitable.
Now the leading industrial units were experiencing losses despite being managed professionally. The crisis in industrial sector is causing flight of capital and relocation of industrial units to the countries like Bangladesh and Malaysia.