Pakistan Yarn Merchants Association (PYMA) has appealed the country’s Government to help save the polyester filament fabric industry from going into loss and affecting millions of jobs. Representatives of PYMA have recently submitted their official statement to the Government officials, outlining the reasons and solutions for the issue.
During the last five years in Pakistan, around 300,000 knitting machines and looms have suspended operations, resulting in directly and indirectly affecting a total of around 5 million people.
Explaining the issue, Danish Hanif, Chairman PYMA (Sindh-Baluchistan Zone), said, “The inefficient and outdated domestic polyester filament yarn (PFY) industry does not meet even 25 per cent of the total demand of Pakistan,” adding, “The PFY attracts 12 per cent custom duty versus polyester fibre, which attracts only 7 per cent custom duty.”
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It may be noted here that there is an ongoing Anti-Dumping Investigation on polyester filament yarn in Pakistan, which is a basic raw material for the polyester. Underlining this issue, PYMA commented, “The user industry would be unnecessarily penalized even for those products, which are not produced by the domestic industry and the cost for the end-user would increase substantially and that would affect the weaving and knitting industry.”
However, PYMA is hopeful to witness reduced custom duty in upcoming months on polyester filament yarns (P-FDY and P-DTY) from 12 percent to 7 per cent with no enforcement of further duty in any form.
