MULTAN: Mian Iqbal Hassan, President Multan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has said that the manufacturing sector has lot of expectations from the current year’s budget.
Talking to Customs Today on the federal budget 2015-16, he regretted that the government had not taken any protective measure to promote the local industry as many industrial units had been closed down due to energy crisis and it also caused un-employment in the country.
He said that imports had been facilitated by reducing import duties at large scale but more than 70 percent of the population was living below the poverty line. He said that hunger and unemployment was at large scale and this budget would further increase the gap between haves and have-nots.
Mian Iqbal Hassan added that our country is facing serious crises because of extremism, bad law and order situation and energy crises. Our economy is derailing at a high speed. The government policies are not favorable to the required economic growth of the country. Our trade deficit is alarmingly increasing every year. Our trade deficit in 2001 was $950 million and during last year about $20 billion and likely to increase to $22 billion in the current fiscal year 2014-15 he compared the trade deficit.
He accepted that our manufacturing sectors particularly engineering and auto vending industries are in serious crisis and it is unfortunate for Pakistan that our economic is squeezing day by day going at a larger scale. Talking to Customs Today that auto industry plays vital role in the development of any country and all vehicles assembled in Pakistan are fitted with imported engines, transmissions, suspensions, power steering, fuel injection systems, turbo chargers and many other parts and it is a cluster of technology consisting of over 4000 different technologies. If this industry is well established and self-sufficient, nobody can stop manufacturing activities in any sector he told. He believed that economic development of China, India and Thailand and Malaysia are good examples in Asia that they made progress because of their automobile industrial growth.
He told that it is unfortunate for us that Pakistan has not capitalized on its agricultural strength particularly cotton, to transform it in to garments / home textiles, and other value addition area, rather we sell cotton as cotton, yarn or just weaved course fabric as a commodity. Further said that textile sector is our largest industry in the country but we have never look in to the basics of our manufacturing sector.
We just stuck at about Rs 13 to 14 in our textile exports and our current exports of textile are less than last year. He thought that government needs to encourage the value added sector to invest more and also tap markets other than the traditional EU, UK and USA regions. We have very limited time, may be maximum 10 years. We should explore African and Asian markets otherwise we will miss the opportunity of investment and about 15 million spindles are operating in Pakistan but we feel ashamed that not a single one has been manufactured in Pakistan, although it is low tech engineering product. He embarrassed that our all most 100% textile manufacturing machinery operating in the country is imported.
He said the budget for the year 2014-2015 shows total revenue receipt target of Rs 2605 billion which is hardly to be met? He commented on the volume of current budget has been increased to Rs 4389 billion with the revenue receipts target of Rs 3104 billon . Moreover, he stated that in the currently presented budget 2015-16 Rs 1280 billion has been reserved for local and Rs 316 billion for foreign debt servicing which is 51.4 % of our total revenue collection target.
He expressed that commercial banks have offered high exorbitant interest rates up to the early days of current fiscal year 2014-15 and the government is fetching money from commercial banks for their day to day operation and also commercial banks are hesitant to provide long term capital finance to private sector industries even at higher rate.
He told Customs Today that it is a good sign to attract the local investors by reducing interest rate up to 7% in the country . We are afraid that the investments in savings will reduce and the investments will be shifted to non-productive sectors particularly but recently the Dubai land department has said that Pakistani investors have made investments for 4.3 billion dollar during 2013-14 and during first quarter of this year Rs 379 million.
The government should protect the rights and assets of overseas Pakistanis and they are sending huge foreign exchange every year This year, it is expected that they will send about 18 billion dollar.
Replying to a question, he said, we seriously need water for agriculture, industry and human consumption. We have to construct many large size water dams. The Kalabagh sight is most ideal and suitable for construction of dam on entire indus valley even better than Tarbella. It is also to be noted that 1/3 capacity of Tarbella, water storage has been lost due to earth filling. This issue has been politicized and a big conspiracy organized by Indian RAW to damage the economic structure of Pakistan and is used as a war weapon.
