The Chairman of All Pakistan Bedsheets and Upholstry Manufacturers Association (APBUMA), Muhammad Aasim Shah, has said that Pakistan's textile, particularly bedsheets, aprons, hosiery, grey cloth and other products, had received tremendous response from buyers at a fair of Pakistan lawn suits and bed sheets in Delhi.
Talking to newsmen here on Saturday he said that India and China have huge markets, of about 2.5 billion people, and with the increase in purchasing power of their middle class there is great demand of Pakistani textile products. A lot of Indians residing in US especially requested to send them Pakistani bed linen and other home textile products due to their innovative colours, design and price.
He said that the manufacturers and exporters of value-added textiles should enter into joint ventures with their local brands to get a lion's share of their huge markets. To maintain the pace of growth, various initiatives are underway by the government to increase exports.
Aasim said he was optimistic that Pakistan would soon be getting duty-free market access to EU, after India withdraws its objection at World Trade Organisation (WTO) on EU trade concession to Pakistan and expects additional about $1 billion export to EU in next three years.
In line with implementation of South Asia Free Trade Agreement (Safta), Pakistan will be allowing import of a large number of items from India which are on the negative list, a step towards trade liberalisation with India will give a large export market to textile products.
APBUMA chairman said that Pakistan has also entered the second phase of Free Trade Agreement with China from January 1, 2012, allowing a large number of value-added textile products duty-free exports to China, including readymade garments. He said that the government should negotiate with Turkish government to sign a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) because textile exports to Turkey, particularly grey cloth and denim fabric, woven garments have been seriously affected due to imposition of protective duties by Turkish government to safeguard their local textile industry.
All the world-renowned brands like Levi's, GAP, Nike, Addidas, Jordache, Diesel, Polo etc are manufactured in Pakistan. The country's textile sector has state-of-the-art plants and machinery with skilled labour. Pakistani lawn, bed linen and denim fabrics have made their name world-wide. According to him, Pakistan is supplying quality textile products to 180 million people in Pakistan, in addition to earning about $14 billion foreign exchange for the country. The textile industry had made substantial investment of more than $8 billion during 2002 to 2007 under BMR to acquire latest technology and to expand production capacity. In spite all these achievements, textile industry still lacks value-addition.
He said textile sector is the backbone and single largest sector of Pakistan's economy, contributing 55 percent of total exports, providing 38 percent jobs in the manufacturing sector and contributes 8.5 percent of the gross domestic product. The textile sector is the second largest exporter of cotton yarn, third largest exporter of fabrics and fourth largest producer of cotton in the world. Last year (2010-11), textile sector had shown tremendous growth, as textile exports rose by 35 percent to $13.8 billion, which has boosted total export to more than $25 billion. Due to increase in the local cotton prices at par with international market, some of the textile groups switched over to value-addition products like knitting, home textile, woven garments, jeans and towels and started to export value-added textile products instead of exporting raw material like cotton and yarn.
Pakistan has truly not benefited with worldwide research and development in agriculture and usage of new seeds and varieties as a result Pakistan has the lowest per acre yield. All the major cotton producing countries like USA, India, China and Pakistan are expecting this year a bumper cotton crop of a total of 126 million bales which is 11 percent higher than last year's production of 114 million bales, mainly due to increase in cotton production of China by 13 percent, Pakistan 19 percent, India 9 percent, Australia 23 percent and Turkey 42 percent. According to Textalk International survey, this year the world cotton consumption is expected at 116 million bales, which is 3 percent less than last year. As such, with 11 percent increase in cotton production and 3 percent decrease in cotton consumption, there will be a surplus this year with all the major cotton producing countries, which will result in decrease in cotton prices in Pakistan and the international market as well.
Comments
Comments are closed.