‘Pakistan may lose major share in textile export this year’

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Pakistan may lose its major share in textile exports and suffer negative growth during the current fiscal year, as about 20-25 industries face closures or are being diverted to neighbouring countries such as India, Turkey, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Sources said on Saturday that because of sky-rocketing prices of inputs, limited availability of basic inputs of textile units such electricity and gas, inconsistent government textile policies and worsening law and order situation had forced many textile mill owners to either to close down their units or to shift their businesses to nearby countries where the cost of doing business was comparatively less than Pakistan. “During the past fiscal year, 15 percent of the total number of textile units of Pakistan shut down completely, while during 2012-13, 20-25 percent of the rest of textile mills are likely to divert to the other South Asian countries”, sources added. “You can well imagine the rapidity at which the situation is worsening…just during the past month and a half, six hosiery processing factories have shut down in Karachi while some mill owners from the Faisalabad region also shut down their factories mainly because of the energy crisis”, sources disclosed. “Unfortunately, most of the times untimely delivery of our textile products to buyers abroad due to power crisis has resulted in considerable reduction in overall textile exports. Even our old clients are now hesitant to place orders for our textile products due to delays in delivery and comparatively high costs”, sources lamented. During the last fiscal year, the textile sector added $ 12.35 billion to the national exchequer against the export target of $ 16 billion while the target set for 2012-13 is $ 12-13 billion. Chairman All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA), Mohsin Aziz, while talking to the Business Recorder, said that prolonged electricity load-shedding and shortage of gas are key factors in the decline of overall productivity of textile sector , adding that the government has failed to resolve the crisis. “The Indian government’s decision to allow Pakistani investment on its soil would also trigger capital flight from Pakistan because of deteriorating law and order and energy crisis,” the APTMA chief argued. The decision by India to relax the ban on investments from Pakistan was made in April 2012 while Pakistan had never imposed restrictions on investments by Indians.