PTA concerned over gas, power load shedding
LAHORE: The leather goods and leather exports declined around 30 percent due to power and gas load shedding, animals and basic raw material smuggling and higher cost of doing business. Khurshid Alam, Chairman PTA informed a resolution has already been passed by PTA simultaneously in Karachi and Lahore via video conference system and requested to the government and ministries concerned to impose complete ban on export of wet blue and leather split leather of all kinds and raw hides and skins and pickled leather from Pakistan. He said government should take concrete measure to ensure availability of basic raw materials in Pakistan for leather sector to enable to fetch precious foreign exchange in terms of timely execution of export order for the national exchequer. Alam said a scam of 155 containers has recently been unearthed by Pakistan Customs (Model Customs Collectorate Karachi) and seized 4 containers, which were alleged for mis-declaration and fraudulent export to Taiwan without payment of regulatory duty of more than one million rupees. The total consignment was declared as $54,440.91 equal to Rs 4.709 million. The containers on examination were found comprising of wet blue split leather of PCT code 4104.1900 as against the mis-declared description of Buffalo Side Split Leather of Cow double Butt Leather of PCT heading 4113.9000. shabbir sarwar