Garment Exporter's Survey on Custom Schemes including Duty Drawback, DTRE and Manufacturing Bonds

Garment Exporter's Survey on Custom Schemes including Duty Drawback, DTRE and Manufacturing Bonds

Donors/Partners: World Bank Group

Duration: Oct 2018 till March 2019. Project Team Members: Dr. Vaqar Ahmed, Ahad Nazir, Muhammad Adnan, Syed Mujeeb-ur-Rehman, Shahbaz Tufail, Hassan Murtaza.

Objectives: SDPI with World Bank, as part of broader program of assistance, is conducting a study that explores Pakistan’s trade policy and the access that is provided to exporters to imported inputs.  Experience to date suggests that exporters lack timely access to imports and that this failure hinders and distorts Pakistan’s export performance particularly in the textile and RMG sector. Consequently, SDPI and the World Bank seeks to conduct a thorough diagnosis of the issue and to develop a set of recommendations designed to improve exporters’ access to imported inputs.

The objectives and methodology of the project are:

• Prepare the population of RMG Exporters in Pakistan
• Get access to data from FBR and separate the users of 3 schemes in question and the users of no scheme.
• Examine the structure and growth of Pakistan’s RMG exports;
• Examine in detail three primary Customs’ schemes designed to give exporters timely access to imported inputs at world prices, namely: Duty
• Drawback; DTRE; and Manufacture in Bond.
• Survey the following groups to ascertain the performance of the schemes as perceived by both users and potential users:
• Exporters, both direct and indirect, who use any of the three schemes; and
• Exporters, both direct and indirect, who do not use, but potentially could use, any of the three schemes.
• Validate the results of the survey through focus group discussions

Expected Outcomes:

• Analysis of the garment export sector of Pakistan especially the re-export of imported fibres after value-addition
• Submissions for improvement into Strategic Trade Policy Framework
• Further improvement in Custom’s Operations.

Project Activities:

• Survey of 100 garment exporters in Lahore and Karachi. 60 (20 each) must be using the schemes and 40 should not be using any scheme
• Focus Group Discussions with each type of stakeholder