QUETTA: Pakistan’s shipbreaking industry at Gaddani along Balochistan coast close to Karachi has a potential for gainful employment of one hundred thousand people besides contributing more and more revenue to the national wealth in time to come, a spokesman of Pakistan Shipbreakers Association told PPI in an interview here on Tuesday.
He said shipbreaking industry of Gaddani could be improved if present government continued with no change in existing duty and tax structure on it.
The spokesman said the association neither sought any tax relaxation nor undue incentives and facilities in the federal and Balochistan budgets for the financial year 2007-08.
He said the association simply demanded 25 percent regulatory duty on the import of steel junk and illegal imports of substandard material and its easy access to Pakistan Steel Markets.
The association said the government should restrain the use of construction bars made from substandard material which did not meet PSI standard.
He claimed that steel and other material available from the dismantled ships at Gaddani did not only meet PSI standard but were internationally acknowledged as quality steel scraps for the steel and building sectors.
Besides high quality steel, Gaddani dismantled ships also provided cheapest possible non-ferrous material such as copper, brass, aluminum, machinery, generators, boilers, wood and tools of international standard for country’s ever growing sectors of industry and commerce.
The spokesman said in good old days of 1970’s Gaddani shipbreaking industry was second in the world after Taiwan. Gaddani beach handled 150 ships for dismantling at a time, meeting country’s most demand for steel and steel related consuming sectors, he said.
Asked for the catastrophic downturn in the performance of Pakistan shipbreaking industry at Gaddani, the spokesman said negative policy and program pursued by former President Gen Ziaul Haq and former Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto hard hit the rock bottom of industry.
There was a time, he said, when Gaddani shipbreaking industry had contributed to the national exchequer Rs5.3 billion under head of tax revenue in one fiscal year but later annual revenue fell to Rs160 million only because of federal government’s flawed policy and program mostly politically motivated move to harm Gaddani shipbreaking industry.
The spokesman said President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s vision and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz ‘s present government policy have set shipping industry on sound footing for forward looking move.—Agency