KARA CHI - All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) has urged the government to save the textile industry from severe crisis by rationalizing polyester staple fiber (PSF) tariff to decrease the cost of yarn so that our value added sector becomes more competitive in the international market. APTMA Spokesman said that the import and export of cotton is duty free, however, a number of trade restrictions have been imposed on PSF. Consequently, synthetic usage is only 18% of Pakistans raw material mix as compared to 60% prevalent in the world. He further said that there is currently serious tariff anomaly whereby PSF blended yarn has 0% import duty but the import of PSF as raw material is subjected to a punitive regime of 4.5% import duty. Pakistan is in extreme shortage of PSF. Dewan Salman Fibers closure due to the groups overall financial problems has resulted in shortage in local availability of PSF by 38%. Resultantly, the difference between local Pakistani PSF and international PSF prices has ballooned to a staggering figure of almost 30% making our exports uncompetitive. He urged the Government that if Pakistan has to achieve an export target of $25 billion by 2014 and create hundreds of thousands of jobs, all restrictions and tariffs on import of raw materials that are of limited availability in Pakistan have to be removed.