The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) has decided to ‘voluntarily’ close down the textile industry because of the losses it had been suffering, its chairman S M Tanveer said on June 28, according to the Pakistani media. “An emergency meeting of Aptma’s general body has deliberated on the adverse circumstances and found it unfeasible to incur losses by operating mills partially,” Tanveer said in a statement. Tanveer said the member mills have decided on their own to put their operations off voluntarily because of the viability issue. “We do not want confrontation with the government therefore we are closing down mills voluntarily,” he said. According to the Aptma chairman, the cost of doing business in the textile sector has gone through the roof and the burden of incidental taxes, provincial cess, system inefficiencies and the punitive withholding tax regime have added fuel to the fire. Tanveer said the owners of mills in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan and Karachi had decided to close down operations and lay off millions of workers because they had nothing to offer their international buyers against the regional competitors. The Aptma has been railing against the government’s taxation policies, a chronic energy shortage and red tape that act as hurdles to the ease of doing business in Pakistan.
