Vice Chairman, Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers & Exporters Association (North Zone), Mian Naeem Ahmed has stressed collective, comprehensive, viable and immediate steps to arrest declining exports to the US markets. He was briefing a two-member delegation of Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (Karachi) here on Thursday. The delegation comprised of Bashir Saleh Director General (Textiles) TDAP and consultant textile Dr Nighat Ali.
Mian Naeem Ahmed said that the share of knitwear sector is $1.8 billion, which is 10 percent of our national economy. He informed that there are 2,000 members of PHMA in their offices situated in Karachi, Lahore and Sialkot. This sector is contributing Rs 400 million towards taxes and Rs 300 million towards EDF in addition to providing jobs to more than 1.5 millions wage earners.
He also explained in detail the problem being confronted by the important value added sector and said that government must clamp complete ban on export of raw cotton and cap yarn export to ensure availability of yarn to domestic industry at reasonable rates. Director General (Textiles) TDAP Basher Saleh said that government was worried about the declining textile exports to US and said that conscious and serious efforts are being made to check this negative trend.
He said that two specialised groups have been constituted to address this issue in consultation with the concerned stakeholders. He said that one group is for Karachi while the other is for Lahore and Faisalabad. "We are here to discuss issues and prepare viable proposals to stop this declining trend", he said and requested hosiery exporters to give their input to solve their issues at the earliest.
Dr Nighat Ali consultant textiles said that in first phase the issues responsible for these industry trends in textile export would be identified while in second phase the proposals would be finalised to solve this crisis. Dr Khurram Tariq, Muhammad Aslam Chaudhry, Khawaja Muhammad Amjad, Qamar Aftab, Mian Khalid Pervaiz, Rana Aslam and Director TDAP Faisalabad Muhammad Naseer attended this meeting.