Yarn price hike slammed

KARACHI: Pakistan Yarn Merchant Association (PYMA) on Tuesday demanded of the government to rein in an uncontrolled increase in the prices of yarn and save the local industry from going down as it was hanging by a thread.

“Due to the unavailability of yarn raw material according to the local demand, domestic filament yarn producers are getting undue advantage of regulatory duty imposed on imported polyester fibre,” Khurshid A Shaikh, central chairman PYMA said in a statement.

“As a result, yarn prices have gone through the roof and domestic polyester fabric industry is on the edge closing down.”

Shaikh said domestic yarn manufacturers did not have the capacity to meet local demand due to which industries were forced to depend on imported raw material.

“In spite of low production capacity of domestic yarn makers, imposition of 5 percent regulatory duty on imported polyester yarn is undecipherable and will destroy the national weaving/knitting industries,” he said adding that it had made the cost of imported yarn unbearably high.

The PYMA office bearer further said the duty on imported polyester filament yarn was higher than imported polyester fabric, which was against the law and had devastated the whole polyester chain cascading system.

“Polyester filament yarn is not a luxury item but only a raw material,” he said. He said the government should reduce the duties/taxes on imported filament yarn to save local industry from total collapse.

“Beside this, anti dumping duty on imported filament yarn must be suspended until industry achieves production capacity to fulfill national demand,” he said.