With a view to augmenting the country's export of bed-wear textile, the government should reduce mark-up rate and high cost of inputs to enable the local manufacturers to compete with India, Sri Lanka, China and Bangladesh on world markets, said Chairman Pakistan Bedwear Exporters Association (PBEA), Zain Bashir on Saturday.
Speaking at a joint press conference along with Shabbier Ahmed and Naqi Bari at a local hotel, he showed panic over the falling bed-wear textile export to $1.7 billion in 2012, which had touched over $2 billion mark in 2005-06. The newly elected chairman vowed he would leave no stoned unturned to regain the country's former textile exports status and compete with the neighbouring countries on the world markets. "What is required from the government is co-operation and support," he demanded.
He said utilities tariffs particularly gas are higher in Pakistan for the textile industry than that of key competing nations namely India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. "All have a gas rate which is lower than that of Pakistan," he added. Besides, he said, the markup rate for textile industries in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and China are lower than what the manufacturers pay in Pakistan. "India and Bangladesh provide direct support to their respective textile exporters in the form of drawbacks," said Zain. He said costs of gas and of finances to the textile sector in Pakistan are also higher than that of international competitors.
He said if the textile exporters were provided with the appropriate support, they would have had a significant growth in the last six years. "It is tragic to see that instead of increasing our share on the world markets and helping the country earn foreign revenue, we have gone backward," he lamented.
The chairman said Pakistan is a rich country with natural resources in abundance but nothing of it could be utilised in the past efficiently to bring out the nation of power and financial crisis. "There is plentiful coal in Pakistan," he said. He said small investments in coal mining could trigger great progress in energy generation to suffice for the much needed power for residential, commercial and manufacturing sectors of the country. "Very little investment is required to mine the coal and process it to bring it to a level that it can be used as fuel," he viewed.
He said the natural gas in the country is being wasted to fuel private vehicles and residences throughout the country whereas such an import input should only be spared for industrial requirements. "That is because the rest of the world knows the significance of precious natural resource, which needs efficient and careful utilisation in Pakistan as well," he suggested.
Zain said that the gas loss which the country is facing could be gauged as Unaccounted for Gas (UFG). He said: "It is shocking that a country starved for natural gas is in reality experiencing UFG loss of over 10 per cent in residential and commercial sectors. It is noteworthy that UFG loss is below 2 percent in the industrial sector". Despite the fact that textile manufacturing sector utilisation of gas is more efficient, it has been slapped with forced load shedding of the input, he regretted. "The industrial sector runs on over 60 percent efficiency whereas home geysers run at 18 percent efficiency" he gave a comparison.