RECORDER REPORT

KARACHI: The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) has claimed that there is no shortage of cotton yarn in the domestic market.

APTMA (Sindh-Balochistan region) chairman Asif Inam in a statement strongly denied reports of yarn shortage and its unavailability in the domestic market.

He said that yarn import was allowed from all over the world except India in response to their restriction on import of Pakistani products.

He said that as per the customs data, yarn could be imported from 59 countries.

“The love for India despite the hostile attitude for Pakistani products is not understandable, and the data is strangely fabricated to portray a gloom and doom situation of slight decline in exports by comparing exports of 28 days of February 2021 with 29 days of February 2020 which was a leap year,” he added.

Asif Inam further said that the downstream industry was creating a hue and cry of unavailability of cotton yarn even though they were availing all the facilities which were not provided to the exporters of yarn including subsidized export refinance facility, duty local taxes and levies (DLTL), etc.

Moreover they were also allowed to import duty-free cotton yarn under DTRE, export oriented and manufacturing bond schemes if they found local yarn expensive.

The downstream industry was pushing the government for long-term policies, and yet at the same time it would like government interference to rescue it from any bad decision of forward selling of foreign exchange, not selling of foreign exchange and higher commodity prices all over the world due to relentless money printing by the developed countries during COVID-19 which everybody had to deal with, he said.

Inam urged the government not to allow import of cotton yarn, etc., from India until they restored normalization in trade with Pakistan.