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Import duty exemption to Gadoon units withdrawn

IQBAL KHATTAK

PESHAWAR: The Gadoon Amazai industries will plunge into a real crisis when 25 percent exemption in customs duty on import will be withdrawn from Friday.

The Chairman, Standing Committee of Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI), Mohammad Luqman Shah, told journalists on Thursday that it "will be a serious setback to the Gadoon-based industries".

"The withdrawal of concession may lead the Gadoon Amazai Industrial Estate (GAIE) to total ruination," Luqman Shah remarked.

He pointed out that the withdrawal of the 25 percent exemption incentive would also hit the remaining 73 industrial units.

"There is another grave situation which is likely to emerge and that is the future of 12,000 to 15,000 labourers working in these industrial units. With the closure of these units, all these labourers certainly will lose jobs," he feared.

Luqman recalled that since the establishment of the GAIE the industrialists experienced jolt after jolt. But this is going to be a shock of life. It appears that the Gadoon industries will no longer operate, the chairman said.

The Pakistan People's Party government in 1990 had offered a number of unprecedented incentives to industrial zone in Gadoon, some 120-kms off here, to provide poppy producers an alternative source of income.

However, these incentives were massively misused as they yielded no desired results.

Luqman said that the Chief Executive, the NWFP governor and federal finance and commerce ministers turned a deaf ear to their appeals for immediate revival of the incentive. "Certainly, we are disappointed the way we are being treated."

He said the GAIE industrialists wanted the government to give a second though to its decision and it must restore the incentive. "We call upon the government to save the Gadoon industries as well as labourers," said Luqman Shah.