LAHORE
Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer has assured his full cooperation to tanners and will put across their case to the prime minister in the federal cabinet meeting to be held on October 27, 2010 here at Governor House.
He was addressing a group of tanners at luncheon hosted by the Pakistan Tanners Association (PTA) on Monday. Taseer urged the PTA to develop a working paper on lather tanning industry, which would be helpful for them to contest their case with the prime minister as it had already done by the textile industry.
PTA Central Chairman Khurshid Alam, in his welcome address, highlighted issues pertaining to the tanning industry. He remarked that leather was the second largest industry of Pakistan, which he declared was on ‘the verge of collapse’.
He pointed out that the export of leather and related products had exhibited a 30 percent decline with leather exports dropping $863 million from $1.22 billion during the last three years. “One of the major issues the leather industry is facing is the export and smuggling of live animals to Iran and Afghanistan”, he added.
He said about 100 trucks filled with cattle were smuggled on daily basis. The dire shortage of livestock restricts the supply of hides and skins available for processing to the leather tanning industry. The PTA chairman underlined the fact that the leather was based on processing and value addition in the livestock sector and the export of raw material must be restricted.
He suggested that the government should provide incentives for cattle farming and facilitate the growth of the dairy, livestock and leather sectors. The government’s decision to restrict wheat export was lauded. In a similar vein, he requested the government to stop smuggling of live animals since they are also basic agriculture items.
Load shedding was taking a heavy toll on leather production. “Due to load shedding, industry could not produce quality leather so the price of the final product fell,” he added and asked the government to ensure uninterrupted power supply for this export oriented sector.
Furthermore, labor cost-intensive tanning industries were shifting from the industrialised world to developing countries like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Thailand. “The government should capitalise on this opportunity”, Khurshid Alam asserted.
