TFD Report
LAHORE: The Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry Tuesday urged the government to ban the export of copper bars to safeguard the local industry.
In a letter to the Federal Minister for Industries & Production Muhammad Hammad Azher and Adviser to Prime Minister on Commerce and Investment, Abdul Razak Dawood, LCCI President Mian Tariq Misbah said that copper is one of the most important base metals for use in the engineering sector. The small & medium enterprises (SMEs) involved in the engineering sector including electric cables, enamel wire for all kind of motors/pumps, control panels etc. use copper as raw material for various components. He said that these industries employ thousands of workers and produce value added products that are widely used in industrial, commercial and domestic sectors.
The LCCI President said that most of the SMEs cannot directly import the metal due to minimum shipment size, lack of access to the international trade network or unavailability of bank trade lines. They primarily depend on the copper extracted from scrap and refined by local furnaces/metal plants, he said.
Mian Tariq Misbah said that the local copper metal plants/furnaces prefer to export the copper due to export and tax benefits. As exporting the base metal with little value addition is not in the interest of
