ISLAMABAD: The Commerce Ministry has proposed various steps to enable textile industry to compete with textile industries of India and Bangladesh.
The World Bank has placed both Bangladesh and India in the list of top 10 countries with highest textile exports in the fiscal year 2013 and these countries are posing serious challenge to Pakistani exports, especially the textile sector.
According to export data released by Apparel Export Promotion Council, India overtook Germany and Italy to emerge as world’s second largest textile exporter.
Underneath these circumstances, the MoC had proposed a package of proposals and recommendations to enable Pakistani textile industry to meet the criterions set by competitors in the arena of exports.
“Draw-back for local taxes and levies will be given to exporters of textile products on fright on board (FOB) values of their enhanced exports on an incremental basis if increased beyond 10% over previous year’s exports” a well placed source at MoC told this scribe here on Wednesday adding that mark up rate for Export Refinance Scheme of State Bank of Pakistan was being reduced from 9.4% to 7.5% to provide easy finance to exporters.
The source said that as per proposals that textile industry units in the value added sector would be provided with long term financing facility (LTFF) for up gradation of technology from State Bank of Pakistan at the rate of 9% for 3-10 years duration.
Moreover, import of textile machinery will be duty free for the period of two years” the source said adding, “A new vocational training programme will be launched to train 120,000 men and women, over the five year period, for skills required in the value added sector such as garments and made ups, etc.”
“Factually, textile sector is facing some problems which are hampering its rapid growth especially power outage / load shedding” the source said, adding that the government decided that there would be zero load shedding for all industrial units throughout the country.
Therefore, the source said that it was hoped that the production in the textile sector would achieve targets due to the reduced prices of the petroleum products which would lead to enhanced cost effective textile production because State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) had also reduced interest rate.
