Gas crisis will lower the GDP growth and industrial production- industrialists warned

 FPCCI said that industrial base is losing its productivity and export orders while employment generation is declining as well

Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) in a statement has said that the failure of the government to provide gas to the industry would result in mammoth losses to the country as well as the business community.

Industrialists have voiced fear that the ongoing gas crisis will deal a lethal blow to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth, bring down export orders and increase the cost of production for the business community.

President FPCCI Mian Nasser Hyatt Maggo has warned that “the industrial base is losing its productivity and export orders while employment generation is declining as well,” he expressed concern. “These factors will jointly dent economic growth in the ongoing fiscal year.”

He urged the government in general and Prime Minister Imran Khan in particular to hold the relevant ministries and departments responsible for halting gas supply to the industries.

“It is no secret that surplus capacity is present at the existing LNG terminals, however, no professional planning has been done to avert the gas crisis in the ongoing winter season,” he lamented.

The FPCCI president added that the industry was not against setting up new LNG terminals, however, the notion that the current crisis emerged due to the lack of LNG infrastructure was wrong. In fact, a massive capacity, present at the LNG terminals, was not being utilised, he emphasised.

Maggo stressed the need to import a Floating Storage and Regasification Unit (FSRU) having a huge capacity to add larger volumes of gas to the distribution infrastructure and ensure supply of the fuel to industries at the earliest.

FPCCI President Nasser Hyatt Maggo said, “The failure of the government to provide gas to the industry has caused unbearable losses and will reflect badly on the growth rate of the current fiscal year.”

In his opinion, “it is a conspiracy against this government... and that investigations can point towards one of its own ministries, which is facilitating new terminals at the cost of the national interest of Pakistan and causing the destruction of industrial production; which is the backbone of foreign exchange earnings and exports of Pakistan”.

The experts also pointed out that the ongoing gas crisis would strike the manufacturing sector hard and was threatening exports of the country. They also pointed out that gas shortage would hamper goods production and adversely impact GDP growth because the industrial productivity was shrinking.

They added that other factors of production such as labour wages, financing cost and logistics charges had spiked as well and feared that they would deal a blow to the economic growth.

                                                                  Web Desk