KARACHI: A four-member delegation of Karachi Timber Merchant Group (KTMG) apprised the Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue and Economic Affairs Chairman Qaiser Ahmed Sheikh that an exorbitant duty on wood and its items like Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF) is being received, a statement of KTMG said here on Wednesday.
Honorary General Secretary Mukhtar Hussain Dossani, Vice-President Zahid Hussain Piprani, Senior Member Saeed A Basathia and Managing Committee Members Mushtaq Vali Mohammed attended the meeting of the Standing Committee on Finance Revenue and Economic Affairs.
The members of the delegation explained the committee about the duty structure on MDF and demanded the government to reduce the duty on MDF Board as it is semi- finished product and a raw material for many industries. They also demanded to eliminate custom duty on wood and timber to safeguard meagre forest resources.
The importers of MDF asked the committee to further reduce the duties from 17 per cent to 5 per cent to protect commercial importers who are selling this imported product to small workshops, carpenters, joineries, and the value-addition industry of Pakistan.
This raw MDF is being imported from Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia to meet the local demand, but importers have to pay an accumulated tax of about 55 per cent which includes customs duties and other taxes.
While the same MDF is being imported from Sri Lanka at 0 per cent duty so the accumulated expenses are 35 per cent in shape of sales tax and withholding taxes under the Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The huge gap of 20 per cent in customs duty is inequality, unfair and unjust.
Meanwhile, importers of MDF other than Sri Lanka are paying duties up to 20 per cent higher and the importers are not happy with these additional taxes which they find discriminatory.
They further claimed that the manufacturers of MDF from Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa (KPK) are also lobbying to enhance the duties in the federal budget for past two to three years.
The delegation highlighted that there are a number of value-addition industries in Pakistan and they use raw MDF as their raw material, any issues in the imports of MDF could result in massive unemployment in this sector, which would be harmful to multiple industries.
Dear Sirs and Madames,
My intention to write to you is for information purposes only so that we could possibly work together.
We are a larger company in Baghdad, Iraq. We import wood in larger quantities from different countries and sell it again to furniture stores or construction sites.
We would be interested to order large quantities of pine spruce and export it to the Um Qasr port in Iraq.
We initially need 100-150 cubic meters of MDF wood in standard size, but the size of the depth is either 6, 9 or 12 millimeters, and we need a separate price for each size.
Again to the person, I am the representative of the company K & K from Iraq living in Frankfurt Germany.
I hope for a feedback.
Yours sincerely
Jinan al-izzi