FAISALABAD: Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FCCI) Vice President Ahmed Hassan has welcomed the revival of facility of GSP by US and demanded that textile component should be enhanced among the items identified under the GSP facility.
After attending a briefing arranged by the Office of US Trade Representative on Expanding Pakistan’s Exports through GSP program, he said that America has allowed duty free access to 3500 items to American markets. He said that Pakistan has availed only 1 percent of this facility whereas Indian utilization is 25 percent.
He said that the preferential trade package covers around $200 million exports from Pakistan as against the total exports of $3.603 billion to the US, which is quite insignificant in terms of value. He further said that the GSP is a renewable preferential trade program that allows the eligible products of designated beneficiary developing countries to directly enter the US free of duty. The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have issued instructions for obtaining retrospective GSP treatment which is an appreciable step taken by the US government, he added.
He said that many of Pakistan’s goods are eligible for GSP duty-free including most manufactured items. Among these include inputs used in manufacturing, jewellery, carpets, and certain agricultural products, many types of chemicals, minerals and marble. However, the products not eligible for GSP include most of textiles and apparel, watches, footwear, handbags, luggage, and leather products, he said.
Ahmed Hasan said that He said that Faisalabad is the textile hub of Pakistan its share in total national textile export is 52 percent in terms of dollars Pakistan earns 13 billion dollars from the export of textile products and out of it the contribution of Faisalabad is around 6 billion dollar. He said that surprisingly America has totally ignored this sector in GSP program and it is the main reason that Pakistan fail to harvest its fruits. He stressed the need that American congress should review the list of items by adding maximum textile related products in it.
As regards other products, he said that FCCI has chalked out a program to disseminate the information about non-textile related items which could be exported under GSP program to America. “We will also conduct a study for the information of our potential exporters to apprise them the benefits of exports to America under this program. He said that we will also compile a list of items which could be exported to America under GSP program. He requested Pakistani trade minister in Washington to remain in touch with FCCI and communicate all scheduled and related seminars and exhibitions of non-textile related items so that the concerned exporters could realign their strategy and avail from this facility to increase their exports to America.
