LAHORE: All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) Chairman Aamir Fayyaz will take charge on September 30 at the association’s annual general meeting. Zahid Mazhar and Ali Pervez have been elected as APTMA’s senior vice chairman and vice chairman, respectively. Former APTMA chairman Gohar Ejaz congratulated the association’s newly-elected leadership and further lauded the businessmen group for securing a clean sweep win for the eighth consecutive year. The newly-elected chairman said that the textile industry has been facing a critical situation over the last three years – following an unprecedented fall in exports. “The industry has been burdened with various incidentals of taxes, levies and surcharges and system inefficiencies which cannot be passed over to the buyers of the international market,” he said. Consequently, exports collapsed and cheap imports made their way into the domestic markets, he said and added that the industry had envisaged massive growth in exports by 2018 with an annual addition of $2 billion – after the award of GSP plus from the European Union. However, the target could not be materialised due to the increasing cost of doing business. He appreciated the government’s macro-economic stabilisation and emphasised that export-led growth should be made priority as it requires support for a level playing field viz-a-viz regional competitors, no front loading of raw materials for industry, monitoring of dumped and subsidised materials to safeguard the domestic markets. While appreciating the government’s concerns towards the industry’s issues, he urged Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to hold a meeting with the associations – on monthly basis – to review and monitor exports as the industry looks towards the government for an early revival in the days to come.