Focus sacrificial animals
Posted by Labels: Cattle and Livestock, Festivals and Rituals, Leather, PakistanLeather sector to face brunt of hides’ shortage
Reasons said to be decreased collection of skins during Eidul Azha and smuggling of live animals
KARACHI: The leather sector’s manufacturing units in the country will face a shortage of around one million hides as during this Eidul Azha not many animals were slaughtered.
This year slaughtering of sacrificial animals has decreased drastically as compared to previous year owing to high prices of sacrificial animals and high inflation rate.
With the estimated survey the decrease was by 50 percent for sheep and goatskins while cow skin fell by 10-15 percent.
Pakistan Tanners Association (PTA) Chairman S M Naseem said on Saturday that as prices of goat were on the higher side owing to high inflation, the masses were compelled to make a joint sacrifice of cow (two to seven people buying a cow).
He said an estimated collection of hides of sacrificial animals – cow and sheep/goat –was around 5.2 to 5.8 million this Eidul Azha in comparison with last year’s figure, which stood at around 7.2 million.
It is said that heavy decrease in collection of goat skins up to 50 percent this year and cow by 10-15 percent would definitely affect the leather industry, resultantly in unnecessary suffering to the production, he maintained.
It would certainly bring about a negative impact on the pace of receiving precious foreign exchange for the national exchequer as well as to create further unemployment in the leather industry in the wake of low production.
PTA Hide and Skin Chairman Agha Saiddain said another major factor of shortage of raw material was smuggling of live animals from Pakistan to neighbouring countries.
More than 1.5 animals perished in recent floods in Pakistan while export of live animals from Pakistan under provision of special quota was also hindering the raw material supply to the second export-oriented sector of the country.
Saiddain said the leather industry was already facing great turmoil in shape of heavy load shedding, high prices of gas, petrol and smuggling/export of live animals, which already increased the cost of production apart from the scarcity of raw materials specially sheep/goat skins.
The shortage would certainly add further cost in the production to make PTA members unable to compete locally and internationally for fetching export orders, he maintained.
Every day thousands of live animals, especially cows and goats are being smuggled from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan to Afghanistan and Iran.
This smuggling is being facilitated by the fact that the regulated export of live animals is allowed and smuggling also takes place under the guise of ‘regulated export’.
Ministry of Livestock and Dairy Development failed to take any immediate action to stop export/smuggling despite assurance to PTA in a meeting on June 27, 2011.
According to Federal Bureau of Statistics, in July to October 2011, export of live animals stood at 54,100 amounting to Rs 1 billion and in 2009-10, the export of 192,200 live animals fetched Rs 2.10 billion.
The smuggling of more than 500,000 live animals a month is inflicting a loss of more than Rs 7.5 billion to the national exchequer besides causing huge raw material shortage to the second value-added export sector of the country.
PTA appealed to the government to take necessary preventive measures to avoid smuggling of live animals from Pakistan and also to impose a complete ban on export under the provision of special quota.
By Razi Syed
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