Soon after the creation of the proposed textile city the government would set up a parallel 'Garment City' for further value addition of its textile products.
The establishment of the textile city at Port Qasim is expected to fetch an additional 2.5 billion dollars export proceeds through value addition of textile products.
The plan is in its final stages, wherein all the necessary arrangements pertaining to the provision of basic utility facilities such as water, electricity, gas etc have already been made and it is likely to come on ground by the next month.
The project will be spread over an area of 1,200 acres and provide 80,000 direct employment opportunities.
The proposed project has generated a very positive response as 35 investors have already applied to set up their units in the project, where government would spend Rs nine billion on the development of infrastructure only.
Minister for Industries and Production, Liaquat Ali Jatoi gave these details while visiting the Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers Association's (PHMA) head office on Thursday. He said that the government had been giving special emphasis to the development and promotion of the country's textile sector for the last four to five year and the creation of textile city was part of the same endeavours.
He further disclosed that soon after the establishment of the textile city, the government would set up a garment city for further value addition of its exportable textile products.
He stated that the government was determined to provide maximum possible support and incentives to the business community and remove their grievances at the earliest.
In this respect, he disclosed that the Economic Co-ordination Committee (ECC) had recently approved a proposal for this purpose which envisaged the establishment of facilitation center aimed at saving businessmen from undue botheration and delay.
The facilitation center would provide the facility of all kind of registrations to businessmen at a single place, after which they would no more be required to go different places for getting their enterprise registered with different trade bodies like chamber, federation etc.
The center would start its operation within 6-7 days to be run by the board of investment (BoI) personnels who would provide all the guidance and help to businessmen, the minister added.
He also underscored the need of introducing latest technology and highly skilled labour in industries for improving the quality of Pakistani products and getting prepared to face the tough competition in the upcoming WTO regime.
He assured that the government would allow substantial concessions in import duty on machinery and set up training centers for this purpose.
He mentioned that 24 training institutes with the help of Japanese assistance were already in pipeline, out of which two would be specifically dedicated for textile.
He suggested that these two institutes should be established one at SITE area, while the other at the textile city. Besides, a power generation 500 MW would soon start operating in the city to provide low-cost electricity to the industries, he added.
Moreover, he asked the industrialists that if they had any complaint regarding the rationalisation of duty/tax, environment, infrastructure they should co-ordinate with advisory council of the ministry and send their recommendation for the immediate solution of the problems.
He further recounted the economic achievements of the present government and gave its credit to Musharraf's regime.
Earlier, Chairman, PHMA, S/B Zone Imran Ali Sabir highlighted the industrialists' problems and presented recommendations for its immediate removal.