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Speakers at the seminar on Wednesday held the high cost of production, deteriorating law and order situation and lack of effective government policy responsible for the decline in the textile particularly value-added sector's exports to European Union (EU) since textile quota abolishment in January 2005.
Speakers expressed these views at a seminar titled 'The Elimination of Textile Quotas and Pakistan-EU Trade' was organised by Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC) at a local hotel.
Speakers were Muhammad Zubair Motiwala, member prime minister's task force on textile, Dr Khalida Ghaus, Managing Director SPDC and Iffat Ara, Senior Economist at SPDC.
Presiding over the seminar session, Zubair Motiwala observed that 9/11 incident was the turning point in the world history as every thing since then had changed dramatically also hit the country's textile sector badly in its wake.
"Pre-2005 era, we used to think that we will export more textile products to EU, but things went the other way around in post-2005 period left us almost paralysed to compete with regional countries," he added.
He pointed out that around 5 billion dollar investments had been done in the textile sector with a view to augment it to increase exports to EU, but so far failed to achieve desired goals.
"Pakistan has invested 5 billion dollar to confront the post quota World Trade Organisation (WTO) challenges in the world market," he maintained.
Motiwala also held the worsening law and order situation in the city in particular and in the country in general one of the key factors brought about the decline in the textile sector.
He said travel advisory issue was the matter of growing concerns in the textile sector, adding that due to visa restrictions by the developed world to local exporters, country's textile exports could not reach to a prominent figure amid in crisis.
Regarding high utility charges particularly in electricity, he observed that it had also put a negative impact on the country textile manufacturing and exports sector.
He said lack of government's serious policies toward the development of the textile industry with 67 percent exports, it had fallen prostrate to EU post quota challenges.
He turned down the suggestion of merging textile units, saying that it was not the feasible as the proposed concept was impractical in the domestic business environment.
Motiwala demanded of the government to take a serious note of the textile crises which are undergoing for the last few years, and should address them on a priority basis forthwith.
Earlier, Dr Khalida Ghaus in her welcome address, pointed out that government had failed for timely response to the challenges emerged in the wake of post quota era for the textile exports, however, hoped that there was still time for it to act.
Regarding the study on the 'elimination of textile quota and Pakistan-EU trade' conducted by the SPDC, she said it would help bringing the textile industry's exports to EU out of the trouble waters. She said EU was the major market for Pakistan textile sector.
Iffat Ara said SPDC's study was important pertaining to the textile sector's crises and their resolutions. She pointed out during her detailed presentation that country's textile exports to the 15 EU countries were on the track of continuous decline from 1998 to 2004.
The 15 important countries, she mentioned are Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Finland, Germany, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and United Kingdom.
Highlighting the textile exports figures, she said EU imports from Pakistan escalated but rather slowly. She pointed out that China had emerged as leading textile and clothing exporter against its all Asian competitors including Pakistan.
She said Pakistan clothing export share to EU stood at 3 percent in 1995, surging up to 3.5 percent in 2004, depicting an increase of only 5 percent in almost a decade, whereas, China registered a growth of 8.8 percent during the same period. China's clothing export in 1995 stood at 17.3 percent continued moving up to 26.1 percent in 2004, she added.
Iffat said that China, Turkey and India were emerging as major textile exporter countries to EU. She suggested that customs procedures should also be reviewed to ensure the timely shipments of commodities, which were so far lacking.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2007

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