The Express Tribune reported that ship breaking, one of the biggest industries of Balochistan, provides employment to thousands of workers directly and hundreds of thousands of people indirectly in the country.
Comparing shipbreakers with steel melters, the stakeholders said that the industry also contributes revenue to the tune of billions of rupees to the federal government apart from millions of rupees to the provincial government.
The shipbreaking industry has been paying sales tax at the rate of PKR 4,848 per ton whereas melters are liable to pay PKR 4,800 per tonne. Hence, the shipbreaking industry is paying slightly more than the melters.
They claimed that if the electricity cost of melters has increased two-fold since 2007 which is not the factual position, our processing and cutting costs have also increased much more than their electricity cost.
The shipbreakers pointed out that their costs include labour wages, transportation, cutting gases, machinery or equipment maintenance and operational cost of machinery.
The shipbreakers particularly stressed that shipbreaking is not only done in Pakistan but is done worldwide and the main players in this field are many developing countries including China , India , Turkey , Spain and Bangladesh USA
Presently, there is consumption of about 3 million tons of total re rollable material in the country out of which the major share is still being produced by melters. Only less than 0.4 million tons re rollable material is being supplied by the ship breaking industry which comes to less than 20% of the total consumption in the country.
Source: SteelGuru (Sourced from the Express Tribune). 25 May 2011
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