Chairman Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers & Exporters Association (PRGMEA) Mohsin Ayub Mirza has said that rural wages should be 35 percent less than urban areas to encourage investors to invest in low production cost locales. Talking to Business Recorder, he said it is imperative for a vast country that two scales of wages are adopted.
He said garment industry is the only employment sector where education is not much of an imperative and an eight weeks training is enough to turn a man into a skilled worker. However, Chairman PRGMEA pointed out that the textile policy lacks some major initiatives for a clear roadmap to achieve the target of $25 billion export. In his opinion, textile industry sectors should be separately addressed and a task force should be formed for monthly review of each sector along with a member of Ministry of Textile and Ministry of Commerce.
This task force should determine the hurdles being faced by textile industry in achieving their objectives. For example, he said, the area of production should be increased from 3.4 million-hectares for cotton production and farmers should be encouraged through various sources to increase cotton production. BT cottonseeds should be used to enhance the cotton output, which can result up to 30-40 percent increase.
Similarly, said Mirza, export of coarser yarn should be banned since it is only the cotton and electricity which the spinners are exporting where both these commodities are short in the country. According to him, only high-grade (above $5 a kilogram) yarn should be allowed for export. In case of apparel industry, he said, the government has already started the training of female workers on a large scale but this should be spread across the country.
The government should encourage setting up industries in those small districts and special incentives should be given to the investors so that the prosperity prevails throughout the country. He proposed a massive training programme to include the redundant female workforce into the national economy. Pakistan is a country having one of the lowest contributions from the female workforce, which is about 19 percent against 34 percent in South East Asia. The inclusion of these females could change the national outlook of the economy, he said.
Mirza said having a very strong spinning, weaving and knitting ability the country has reasonable potential of processing knitted and woven fabrics. However, he said, the poor vision of policy-makers has adversely affected the apparel industry and caused hindrance towards its growth in Pakistan.
He said Pakistan had everything available to become one of the leading garments exporting country but the same could not be materialised due to lack of vision. The availability of cheap labour, reasonable cotton and auxiliary industry could have easily allowed making the country top in this sector, Mirza observed.
As a result, he said, today we are better known as a raw material supplying country rather than a country, which excels in the value-added industry. Pakistan currently supplies less than 1 percent to the world apparel industry of $375 billion. He said the value added industry is seriously hit due to worst law and order situation..