Pakistan's New Textile Policy to Increase Exports: Shaukat Aziz
By Sheeraz Aslam 'Pakistan Times' Staff Correspondent

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Monday said that the proposed textile policy would help increase export of textile products, improve competitiveness and generate employment in the industry.

He was chairing a high level meeting which approved in principle the draft textile policy here at the Prime Minister House this afternoon.

The Prime Minister said that textile was the backbone of our industrial sector and the government would continue to support the private sector in its efforts to modernize itself, increase the productivity and competitiveness of textile products.

“We need to produce value added products, particularly garments so as to create jobs and higher exports”, he added.

The Prime Minister said that the proposed policy envisages to build a new culture which would expedite the process of improvement in all the segments of textile sector.

He however, emphasized that the skills gap in all the entities of the textile sector as well as the concerned government organisations have to be filled by professionals to cope with the challenges and the changing environments of international marketing.

The Prime Minister said that textile is contributing 66% to the country’s export, 40% to employment and 8.5% of GDP and in this regard the government would take all possible steps required to help the industry to boost its global trade and the proposed textile policy would be a milestone to achieve even higher objectives.

Earlier, the Secretary Textile Industry made a detailed presentation, outlining the main features of the proposed textile policy.

He apprised the meeting of the findings after interaction with all the stakeholders.

He mentioned that the proposed policy would cater for short, medium and long term measures to increase production of cotton, improve value added products, productivity and competitiveness of the textile sector.

He said the proposed textile policy targets 40% increase in the export of textile products and generate employment of over 3.5 million persons.

He further mentioned that in the new textile policy there was a detailed plan which would help create five model garment factories, introduction of new scheme whereby a textile park would be declared special economic zone, setting of weaving city, formation of Pakistan textile research and compliance organisation, audit of processing industry for efficient and economic use of precious chemicals, setting up of state of the art textile laboratory at NTU Faisalabad, horizontal and vertical integration to balance textile value chain, specialized garment training institute for females, one window facility for provision of required infrastructure and standardization of machinery and equipment.

Later, Governor State Bank Dr. Shamshad Akhtar briefed the meeting on various categories of financing facilities to promote industrial development in the country including external commercial borrowings and local long term financing for plants and machinery.

The meeting was attended by Minister for Textile Industry Mushtaq Ali Cheema, Minister for Food and Agriculture Sikandar Hayat Bosan, Minister for Science and Technology Noraiz Shakoor Khan, Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance Dr. Salman Shah, Deputy Chairman Planning Commission Dr. Akram Sheikh, CEO Trade Development Authority of Pakistan Tariq Ikram, Governor State Bank of Pakistan Dr. Shamshad Akhtar and senior officials.●