All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) has stressed the need for improving infrastructure facilities to enable the local textile industry to fulfil orders of foreign buyers, which would bring substantial foreign exchange for the country.
Arif Saeed, Chairman Aptma told Business Recorder here on Thursday that it is a matter of great satisfaction that textile exports of Pakistan are continuously on rise. He said that improved infrastructure facilities are direly needed to enable local industry to further enhance exports, apart from fulfilling the orders of foreign buyers. 'Most of expansion work of textile industry is being made in upcountry areas and better roads, express freight trains, sufficient availability of trailers are direly needed for speedy transportation of export shipments. Infrastructure issue would get more importance with opening of Pak-India trade route through Wagha', he said.
He called for organising Pakistani freight forwarding industry, apart from inviting multinationals to make investment in this sector.
To a question he said that cotton damaged in recent rains/flood would not leave any significant impact on textile exports, as total cotton loss is only a few hundred and thousand bales.
To another question, he said that Aptma is preparing a document for forthcoming textile policy of Pakistan. "We are also going to invite federal secretary textile to give a briefing on the issues confronted to textile industry", he added.
To another query, Arif said that Aptma is of the view that the government must give subsidy to the cotton growers directly.