The appointment of Senator Abbas Afridi as the country’s Textile Minister received a mix response.
The first question that comes to mind is why the government has assigned a JUI-F Senator to textile sector-–a sector whose hub is Faisalabad, a city known to have given all of its seats to PML-N in the general elections last year. But let’s leave politics to those who know it best.
Critics say while Afridi is one of the highest taxpayers in the country-–a notion somehow perceived to be a testament of integrity-–he lacks the necessary background knowledge to lead the all-important textile portfolio.
That seems like a plausible argument, but only until you start thinking. Should ministers or politicians, in general, be sector specialists? Nay! Not necessarily.
As much as Pakistan’s media wants to play with the fact that the Finance Minister is an accountant by profession, the fact of the matter is, that it doesn’t matter if a minister has got a degree in professional sky diving or if he passed out of Le Cordon Bleu London.
Having the right degree or work experience helps, but that’s not the end-all, be-all. For record purposes note that the current UK Chancellor George Gideon Oliver Osborne (aka George Osborne) graduated in Modern History. And for that matter, Jack Lew, Dar’s counterpart in the US took a degree from law school.
Similarly, Kavuru Samba Siva Rao, the Indian textile minister, is an engineer by profession with businesses in construction and health care. So, one may ask then, what is Rao doing with Indian textile then?
Anyways, let’s just rest that degree argument. The point is that Afridi has been appointed as a full-time textile minister. This is a positive development over the previous arrangement where Khurram Dastagir, the Commerce Minister, was given the additional charge of textile ministry.
Textile is a big business in countries like India and Pakistan and requires a lot of government attention on its own. Now that the commerce ministry has succeeded in getting the country the GSP+ status, it is now the textile ministry’s job to ensure that the sector manages to reap the fruits of that status.
This is where Afridi would have to prove his mettle as a minister, considering that a minister’s real job is to efficiently manage the portfolio-–in this case textile—by coordinating the demands of multi stakeholders without comprising on any of the aspects.
In the context of GSP+, two highly important agenda items are on Afridi’s table. One is to ensure that the country’s textile industry meets the countless international conventions-–ranging from labour to environmental concerns-–that must be fulfilled to be able to capitalise on the GSP+ regime.
Second, his ministry has to join hands with the commerce ministry and lobby for sending back the trade and commercial attaches at foreign missions abroad. At one end, Pakistan is asking for ‘trade, not aid’ and at the other end, it is pulling back trade and commercial attaches from its foreign missions abroad to reduce expenses. Just how consistent is that?
Last month, BR Research had a long luncheon with the office-bearers of the Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry, where their president Suhail Bin Rashid raised an important point.
Suhail said GSP+ isn’t only going to help us getting better access in Europe, but it will also work as a symbol of prestige, a marketable USP of sorts, which Pakistani suppliers can use to pitch their products in the non-traditional markets.
Expanding Pakistani textile exports into non-traditional markets will be the real feather in Afridi’s cap. Is he ready to take that challenge?
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