ISLAMABAD: Realizing export potential of textile sector the Ministry of Commerce (MoC) moved a training program of unskilled in value added to the government.
Pakistan exports limited range of garments and made ups. Efforts would be made to widen the production base to include value-added products such as children wear, lingerie, beachwear, leisure wear, technical textiles, geo textiles and medical textiles. For this purpose, collaborations with foreign experts, donor agencies and international universities would be sought and the existing bases at National Textile University, Faisalabad, and Textile Institute of Pakistan, Karachi, would be strengthened.
“This program evolved 120,000 unskilled men and women and PC-1 of this program has been submitted to Planning Commission for approval and approval is awaited” a well placed source at MoC told this scribe here on Saturday.
There are seven Export Development Fund (EDF) training institutes under the joint administrative control of MoC and Textile Division, likely to be merged in MoC soon. These institutions provide training to 1,000 people per annum in various fields of textile sector.
The MoC set up Pakistan-Korea Garment Training Institute, Karachi to provide diploma level training in stitching sector and this institute would provide training to 120 people per annum. Moreover, Ministry is also operating training program with International Labor Organization (ILO) and trained 400 people specially women in stitching sector, while 200 will further be trained under this program.
Under Stitching Machine Operators Training Scheme (SMOTS) 8,500 trainees majority women were trained in Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad and Rawalpindi. The Ministry has established first ginning training institute and recently earmarked the area to initiate its construction During FY 2014-15 till date 60 short trainings/seminars have been carried out on various cotton related topics such as standardization and farm management etc.
Moreover, MoC in collaboration with Provincial Agriculture Department trained 19 female agriculture officers as master trainers in clean cotton picking. These agriculture officers further disseminated the information among 1,900 female cotton pickers.
It is pertinent to note here that textile is the most important manufacturing sector and has the longest production chain, with inherent potential for value addition at each stage of processing, from cotton to ginning, spinning, fabric, dyeing and finishing, made-ups and garments.
The sector contributes nearly one-fourth of industrial value-added, provides employment to about 40% of industrial labour force, and consumes about 40% of banking credit to manufacturing sector and accounts for 8% of GDP.
Barring seasonal and cyclical fluctuations, textiles products have maintained an average share of about 54% in national exports. However, despite being the 4th largest producer and 3rd largest consumer of cotton globally, comparative advantage diminishes due to export of low value added textiles products.
