Karachi, January 04: Owing to severe slowdown in the market coupled with massive Sales Tax refunds not being released by the Government, Al Ghazi Tractors Ltd. is at the verge of taking a bitter decision bringing the plant to a shut down.
The last 4/5 months proved quite challenging for the local tractor industry as being one of the lowest trends ever seen over the last few years bringing massive slow down while leading to considerable non utilization of capacity. It is to be noted that volume of sales declined by 30% during the second half of the year 2018 while comparing with the same period last year.
“We are barely surviving the situation and if funds are not released by the Government instantly to improve the cash flow, this shut down may become inevitable,” said Mohammad Shahid Hussain, CEO, Al Ghazi Tractors.
He said that the industry has been pleading the government to address the anomaly of input tax vs. output tax that leads to completely imbalanced and massive accumulation of refund claims which stand at around Rs.2 billion for Al Ghazi alone. “Serious attention is therefore needed with speedy action from government authorities to save us from irreversible damage,” he added.
“It is shocking to hear at this junction, that the government of Punjab is contemplating to import used tractors in Pakistan which would not only be a huge burden on our foreign exchange but also hurt the local manufacturers carrying inventory of Tractors,” said Shahid.
He said that such move in this situation could only act as a catalyst to bring down the already ailing industry and lead to quite detrimental consequences not only for the companies assembling tractors but also trigger off considerable unemployment within the vendors operations where thousands of people are dependent and engaged in supply of parts and components for the tractors.
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