Pakistan has made least investment in human resource development hitting its exports particularly garments export, which is lower than that of other developing countries of the region despite its great potential. These views were expressed by some experts of textile industry while talking to the Business Recorder.
It is very surprising that Bangladesh produces only 3 percent cotton for its industry but its garments export has crossed $9 billion target while Pakistan's textile industry meets 90 percent of its requirements from locally produced cotton, ironically its garments export is around $3.4 billion, they observed.
They said Pakistan's textile industry ranks amongst the top in the world; Pakistan is world's fourth largest producer of cotton and the third largest consumer of the same.
Cotton based textiles contribute over 60 percent to the total exports, accounts for 46 percent of the total manufacturing and provide employment to 38 percent manufacturing labour forces. Some experts were of the view that Pakistan's textile industry has so far progressed on cheap labour, local cotton, subsidies, quotas and manipulation of the cotton trade.
However, they said that the post quota scenario under the WTO regime has dramatically changed the global trade partners and only a small number of Pakistani companies match international levels for quality and competitiveness.
They said Pakistan's textile industry could not exploit its potential in the free market post WTO regime because of shortage of trained manpower, less investment in human resource management, innovative products and value addition in the garment industry. They expressed surprise though textile is backbone of Pakistan's economy, yet during the past six decades none of the successive governments gave a textile policy to the country.
The experts said that our garment industry is now employing Sri Lankan production managers and quality controllers in their units to remain competitive. They said there are not many textile training institutes of international standards in Pakistan to train the manpower in Art Silk , synthetic weaving, garment, hosiery, towel, apparel, ready made garments etc.
The Textile College Faisalabad which was made National Textile University in 2002 is mainly focused on "spinning and weaving" and its curriculum needs to be updated.
Federal Secretary Textiles Zafar Mahmood said our textile industry remains focused on "weaving and spinning" as about 66.25 percent of the $6 billion investment in the sector went into these units during past seven years.
He said insufficient investment was made in Knitwear & garments (3.74) Made ups (10.16%) Synthetic Textiles (4.65%) and textile procession machinery (15.21%) for balancing, modernising, restructuring and expansion of these units. He said textile industry could not make substantial progress without a solid framework of a knowledge, technology and value addition improvements which are lacking in Pakistan.
Pakistan Institute of Management said that textile sector does not have the culture of investing in human resource. PIM, which conducts training courses in more than 30 different disciplines of mid-level managers of industry, said that the participation from textile sector is the lowest in the last seven years and has hovered between 1.7% to 0.63%.
Secretary Zafar said our methods of picking of raw cotton and ginning are primitive which cause damage to the fiber. The ginning industry with 1,221units has mushroomed in the cotton growing areas informally without adequate regulations, he added.
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