Chairman of All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA), Southern Zone, Zahid Mazhar, has urged the Prime Minister and the Sindh Chief Minister for their intervention to save the export-oriented textile industry of Sindh and Balochistan from total closure due to the denial of gas from November 15, 2022, to February 28, 2023.
The chairman said that the export-oriented textile industries of Sindh and Balochistan are contributing more than 54 percent to the total exports of Pakistan but have been served notices of gas closure without taking into confidence the real stakeholders in respect of gas closure for three and a half months even though the two provinces are producing more than 80 percent of the gas produced in the country.
He further said that due to the extremely low gas pressure and its frequent unavailability, it is very difficult for the export-oriented textile industries located in Sindh and the Hub Industrial Area to run the mills and fulfill their export commitments on time.
The chairman said that the textile industry is an export-oriented industry that runs on a 24/7 basis, and almost all of their member mills are using natural gas as fuel for the generation of electricity to meet their energy requirements. As a result, if they are forced to consume only half of their load, they will be unable to run their mills smoothly and meet their export commitments on time, and as a result, they will not only lose their foreign buyers but also the foreign exchange earned by the country through exports.
He went on to say that this will be the final nail in the economy’s coffin, causing the country to default on its foreign obligations and the currency rate to deteriorate further and reach a point of no return.
He urged the government to take appropriate measures to ensure gas supply to export-oriented industries instead of a complete gas outage.
