LAHORE: The Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry has demanded of the Pakistan Standard & Quality Control Authority (PSQCA) to stop crackdown against Cosmetics & Food Sector as these hard line initiatives will further aggravate the business atmosphere.
In a statement, the LCCI acting President Khawaja Khawar Rashid, Vice President Zeeshan Khalil and members of Executive Committee said, that Pakistan Standard & Quality Control Authority (PSQCA) sudden & abrupt raids, requiring stoppage of sales of un-registered cosmetics and food products on the pretext that superstores are involved in selling substandard cosmetics and food products of unregistered and illegal companies.
Apropos to the above, manufacturers are now required to pay a substantial amount of Rs. 11000 as Registration fee, visit and evaluation fee to PSQCA for each product which is a very big deterrent to registering each and every product. Further the time period required, usually varies from three to six months which again is a long duration and the process cumbersome. An additional 0.1% on the quarterly sales value has also been demanded by PSQCA is also not understood. The PSQCA has few designated labs and coupled with limited technical staff, causes considerable delay in the registration process. It has also been conveyed to manufacturers, that the packaging of food and cosmetic products must contain PSQCA stamp, as such most of packing will require replacement.
Imposing high fines is not only detrimental to economic growth, it also breed corruption. There is a need to revisit the Registration process, which should be made simpler, transparent and must not be a medium for corruption. There is need to have more testing laboratories on PSQCR panel. PSQCR also need to have more technical staff for timely testing of the products”, the LCCI office-bearers said.
The acting president further emphasized that raids on stores only creates panic in the business circles besides inflicting large scale financial losses, thus further deteriorating the economic situation. The LCCI, in larger national interest, supports standardization of products efforts by Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA). However the efforts of the Government should aim at standardization registration but not at a cost to business commodity. They said that growth in GDP will be badly affected besides rendering irreparable loss to the retail sector.
They said, that action against local Cosmetics and Food manufacturers will also shy away all type of investors and certainly will be instrumental in adding Pakistan in their negative list. They said that private sector of the country should be given breathing time. If such an actions is warranted ,it should be done after due consultation with the stake holders, and adequate time given before taking punitive action.
The LCCI office-bearers further demanded of the Government, to take cognizance of the situation and urgently order corrective measures to have positive results.
