The Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (Prgmea) has called for putting in place a reliable system for collecting export data after the commencement of the free trade era, abolishing textile quotas from January 2005.
"Such a system is must to quickly responding to allegations relating to low price and dumping levelled by the importing country under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) regime," said Sindh-Balochistan Zone Prgmea Chairman Razzak H. Paracha on Friday.
He said that the exporting country had to react fast on such allegations either accepting or rejecting them.
"We won't be able to challenge the allegations unless we have genuine data," he added.
He said the Prgmea had started consultations with the Central Board of Revenue (CBR), Export Promotion Bureau (EPB), and Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (Pral) on the subject to evolve an efficient system of data collection.
Presently, the EPB keeps record of textile exports based on figures provided by the Customs of quota countries like the US, European Union (EU), Canada and Turkey.
He said various textile associations had data of textile exports made by their members, and added the Pral data collection system mainly focused on import data maintained for the purpose of revenue collection.
The Prgmea chief pointed out that the genuine export data should be easily accessible to the exporters associations so they could readily answer charges levelled by the importing country under the WTO regulations.