and caused continuing decline of 14 percent in October and 20 percent in November, and has direly affected millions of daily wage workers and vendors of textile industry. These apprehensions were expressed by Arif Tauseef, Chairman of Pakistan Textile Exporters Association while talking to newsmen here on Monday.
Substantiating his arguments, Arif said that textile exports in October last year were 1181 million dollars but declined to $1022 million in October of current financial year. Similarly, last year in November, textile exports were 1031 million dollars, which went down to 819 million dollars in current fiscal year's November. Export volume of value-added textile items also showed downward trend. In October, exports of bed wear declined by 28 percent, knitwear 26 percent, towels 12 percent, and garments 14 percent.
Similarly, in November, exports of cotton cloth declined by 22 percent, bed wear 40 percent, knitwear 38 percent and towels 22 percent. If this trend continues, textile exports declining ratio could reach 300 million dollars in December and 400 million dollars in January, and the export target seems to be a far cry, he contended. He said that gas outage in Punjab is foiling all efforts to improve productivity and exports and government should resolve gas crisis for improving exports. Pakistan is in dire need of enhancing exports to provide some cushion to its sagging economy.
Arif forewarned the Government of impending downslide in the wake of drastic load shedding of gas, resulting in sharp decrease in productivity and job losses. Gas crisis has almost devastated the manufacturing and industrial sectors in the entire province, rendering export units dysfunctional and this situation is resulting in the loss of production and cancellation of export orders. "On the other hand, regional rivals are creeping into our traditional markets, throwing the Pakistani textiles out", he said. Government should adopt proactive approach instead of focusing on short-term solutions must develop long-term and sustainable plans to ensure consistent supply of gas for industrial sector, he said and added that still government could not announce and implement a viable solution to overcome gas crisis.
Textile sector is the most labour -ntensive sector, employing millions of workers and also large number of ancillary sector. Hence, survival of the textile industry is in greater national interest. Closure of gas has endangered millions of dollars worth export orders of textiles. To sustain the industry and to provide employment to labour force of the country, gas should be provided to textile industry, he added.
The PTEA chairman urged the government to speed up its efforts to overcome gas crisis. He said that Pakistan's exports mostly depend on textile and due to outage of gas supply, the country's export will not grow as targeted. He emphasised that the government should ensure supply of gas to industries to avoid troubles in the production process.
Comments
Comments are closed.