All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) on Tuesday demanded the government to extend the date for sales tax returns and payments, suspension of interest charges for the quarter ended March 31, 2020 and deferment of energy bills for March and April 2020.
Shahid Sattar, APTMA’s Executive Director in his three separate letters written to Omer Ayub, Minister for Energy, Dr Reza Baqir, Governor State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and Nausheen Javed Amjad, Chairman Federal Board Revenue (FBR) stated that the future outlook for textile markets is extremely bleak as currently the bulk of export orders already stand cancelled and where orders have not been cancelled, the foreign buyers are asking for long-term extended credit.
The executive director maintained that western analysts have unequivocally classified textiles as one of the markets that would take years to recover to its pre-Covid-19 turnover.
Textile is not an essential commodity and consumers’ preferences would necessarily change for the worse on non-essential consumer goods, once the market reopen.
Sattar added that the domestic market for all practical purposes has completely collapsed with little hope that it would even recover to 50 percent of its pre-Covid-19 levels even by the end of the year.
He added that the cash flow crisis is even more acute for indirect exporters who have not been paid anything out of the releases for sales tax etc.
“As a matter of record these indirect exporters have not been paid a dime over the last three weeks and are unlikely to receive any payments from the director exporters,” Sattar stated.
APTMA’s office bearer added that the direct exporters face a very stark choice between payment of salaries and wages (even if vide the new loan scheme), interest charges, energy bills and suppliers of intermediate products and raw materials. Sattar noted that indirect exporters or manufacturers of intermediate products are already in this crisis situation.
