LAHORE- Pakistan Chemical Manufacturers Association (PCMA) has urged the government to lay down an emergent strategy to fill in the vacuum of the industrial raw materials that has been created because of the prevailing coronavirus crisis in China and the prolonged ban on imports from India.
Mr. Iqbal Kidwai, Secretary General PCMA, in a press statement, has proposed to introduce an incentives-based scheme to encourage indigenous production of the raw industrial materials that were being imported from China and India.
This may be the rightest time for the government of Pakistan to offer incentive package to investors for setting up domestic manufacturing of the materials and inputs which are currently being imported from abroad costing huge amount of the foreign exchange.
He said that the current challenge cropped up due to Corona-virus exodus; it may be turned into time- window opportunity by encouraging domestic manufacturing and making the country self-reliant without recourse to imports, saving considerable volume of foreign exchange. He pointed out that this may be right time for production & expansion of Halal food and related chemicals production in Pakistan.
Referring to the case of chemical industry, he informed that the chemical imports of Pakistan amounted to over USD 10 billion, which is almost 17% of the total import bill and each year there is an average increase of 7 % on this account.
These imports, a large part, consist of input raw materials for value addition. Current corona-virus exodus & ban on Indian imports have created crisis of survival of the domestic chemical industry. On the other hand the global chemical industry, at present, is a $5.7 trillion enterprise, and Pakistan’s share in this is negligible.
In Petrochemical sector there was hardly any production primarily due to non-existence of any Petrochemical Cracker Complex & the down-stream industry of Pakistan was dependent on imports.
While the government was allowing the imports of few raw materials from India on case to case basis, there was an urgent need at the government end to take cognizance of the crisis and find a sustainable solution to resolve the crisis in the short run. And, more importantly, GoP may offer appropriate incentives to investors to encourage domestic manufacturing to make the country self-reliant and compatibly sustainable in the long-run, PCMA spokesperson added.– PRESS RELEASE