Dr Khurram Tariq (Faisalabad) was elected Chairman and Muhammad Rafi Soni (Sialkot) Vice Chairman of the Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers Association (North Zone), while Muhammad Amjad Khuwaja, Rana Mushtaq Ahmad (Faisalabad) and Shezad Azam Khan (Lahore) were elected members of the Central Committee PHMA for next year 2005-2006.
Addressing the AGM, out going Chairman Adil Butt and senior founder member Choudhary Mohammad Aslam greeted newly elected members and hoped that they would be able to overcome the problems and constraints being faced by the knitted industry.
Exporters community in general and Hosiery manufacturers in particular welcomed the elections of PHMA (North Zone).
Javaid Aslam Choudhary, ex-Vice Chairman PHMA (North Zone), Khalid Pervaiz, Haji Mohammad Saleem, Mian Naeem Ahmad, Abdul Nasir, Maqsood Ellahi, Tariq Aziz Shahid, Shahid Ahmad Sheikh, Qamar Aftab and other members also attended the AGM.
Talking to newsmen, newly elected PHMA (North Zone) Chairman, Dr Khurram Tariq, termed the knitwear industry as number one in the ranking of export products with more than $1.5 billion earning during the last year and expressed his views to meet challenges of the time and give a boost to the export sector by adopting diversified marketing techniques and practical support to the industry.
He said that there were about 10,000 knitting machines spread all over the country. Their utilisation capacity is approximately 60 percent. There is a greater reliance on the development of this industry as there is substantial value addition in the form of knitwear.
Besides locally manufactured machinery, liberal import of machinery under different modes is also being made and the capacity based on exports is being developed.
This sector has tremendous export potential. This sub-sector has recorded positive export's growth of 22.8 percent over the last fiscal year, he concluded.
He emphasised the need that before launching the National SMEs policy, all textile sectors, including Hosiery/knitted industry at regional level, should be consulted so that the forthcoming SMEs Policy, scheduled in November 2005 could yield positive results.
He mentioned that in Pakistan the SME sector has not been able to realise its full potential due to lack of co-operation between the government and private sector.
The SMEs, including hosiery continuously suffering from a number of weaknesses, which hamper their ability to take full advantage of the opening of economy and the increasingly accessible world markets.
The areas of constraints are normally identified as labour, taxation, trade capacity, finance and credit availability, he added.
He pointed out that Pakistan is an economy comprising mainly of SMEs. The significance of their role is clearly indicated by various statistics. According to more recent estimates, there are approximately 3.2 million business enterprises in Pakistan.
Enterprises employing up to 99 persons constitute over 95 percent of all private enterprises in the industrial sector and employ nearly 78 percent of the non-agriculture labour force, he added.
He further said that the SMEs are contributing over 30 percent to the GDP, Rs 140 billion to exports, and account 25 percent of exports of manufactured goods besides sharing 35 percent in manufacturing value added.
In the industrial development of the country, Dr Khurram Tariq said that the importance of the SME sector couldn't be overemphasised.
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