'Carpet exports can be enhanced to over $1 billion'

Pakistan's carpet exports can be increased to beyond a billion dollars mark by introducing a comprehensive strategy right from weaving to marketing, as comparatively large demand of Pakistani rugs and carpet has emerged at international market during last one-year.
Vice-Chairman of Pakistan Carpet Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PCMEA) Major Akhtar Nazir Cooki (Retd) claimed this at a press conference here on Saturday.
However, all the proposals regarding establishing a 'Carpet City' near Lahore have fallen to deaf ears of both federal and provincial governments, while Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) is sitting on one such proposal for the last many months, he added.
He said that PCMEA has decided to hold IInd regional hand knotted exhibition from August 28 to 30 at Expo Center Karachi.
Akhtar said that country's carpet and rugs exports increased to US $282.80 million as compared to last year's US $231.44 million. He said non-co-operative attitude of federal government's institution (EPB) is the main hurdle in increasing exports of carpet. He said that India and China attended the 2004 event and now Bangladesh, Nepal, Iran and Turkey have also contacted us to attend this forthcoming event.
Some of our friends were of the view that Pakistan's exports may hurt and would be taken over by arch rival India and China, if they allowed access to the organic dyes formula of this land. However, now Pakistani rugs and carpet have started registering their presence at the international market, which is a positive omen. He said that our buyers usually don't display Pakistani carpets during the international exhibitions, however, in last exhibition at Germany, this concept was changed and 90 percent displayed stuff exhibition was from Pakistan.
He further said that they had submitted the concept of 'Carpet City' to the management of Sundar Industrial Estate (SIE) and requested for the allocation of 150-acre for 100 units. However, the same was turned down because of some unknown reasons, he added. Following this refusal from SIE management, over US $1.5 billion worth of proposition from giant US departmental store, Home Depot, is lying rusting with the provincial minister of industries, he claimed.