RECORDER REPORT

KARACHI: The president of the Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum (PBIF), Mian Zahid Hussain, has emphasized the need for issues of the soap industry should be resolved on priority basis.

Congratulating Tanveer Ahmed Sufi, Tariq Zakaria and Naveed Farooq Afridi as the newly elected chairman, senior vice chairman and vice chairman of the Pakistan Soap Manufacturers Association (PSMA) for the year 2017-18, he said that smuggling of all types of soaps into the country continue to damage the local industry, and this must be stopped for expansion of the local industry, jobs 200,000 people and payment of around Rs17 billion in taxes

Mian Zahid Hussain said that the easy availability of imported and smuggled beauty soaps, toilet soaps and laundry soaps at lower prices is eroding the market share of the local manufacturers.

He added that the prices of raw materials such as tallow, coconut palm, cottonseed and rice bran should be curtailed to make the soap industry more competitive. Some commercial importers are involved in gross under-invoicing and selling their product in the market at much lower prices and capturing a sizable market of finished soaps in Pakistan.

He said that in the current situation the local industry cannot compete with the landed cost of imported soap, which is very low and is being sold in the market at cheaper rates, and the government should use different tools to make soap production more competitive for the local industry.  

Some countries are also exporting soaps to Pakistan through third countries, which has created problems for the local industry which has some 500 soap-making units in the un-organized sector and 100 in the organized sector.

Yearly production of laundry soap in Pakistan in metric tons is 500,000; toilet soaps, 125,000; carbolic soap, 45,000; and detergents, 150,000, in which the use of imported raw material is 80 percent and of local raw material 20 percent.