The Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers & Exporters Association (PHMA) asked the Federal Board of Revenue to speed up releasing the knitwear industry’s sales tax refunds to help ease up its cash flow, especially for the payment of wages to its workers on Eid days.
PHMA North Zone chairman Naseer Butt said that the value-added export-oriented industry is under an extreme financial crunch and is facing losses of billions of rupees as its liquidity remains stuck due to delay in the release of sales tax refunds.
He said that the industry continued to suffer due to a shortage of gas and constant power breakdowns, a shortage of industrial raw materials caused by restrictions on the opening of Letters of Credits (LC), discontinuation of DLTL, and Regionally Competitive Energy Tariffs.
The knitwear industry had earlier expressed satisfaction over the functioning of the FBR’s FASTER system, which was processing claims electronically as per law and rules without any delay. The FASTER system was introduced to end human intervention and process the sales tax claims electronically, while the new parameters introduced in the STGO involving FBR officials will defer the sales tax claims and again open the floodgates to corruption, he pointed out.
PHMA urges speeding refunds
