Textile sector eyes $3 billion garments export through Expo Pakistan

The value-added textile sector eyes garments export worth $3 billion to South America, Russia and Poland as an initial entry into the untapped global markets with clear intentions to reduce dependency on the North American Markets, said exporters at the 6th Expo Pakistan 2011 on Friday.
Delegations from different countries continued visiting different stalls at the grand fair on the second day and some of the businessmen also held negotiations with the local exporters. "Today, we (exporters) had meetings with the visiting delegations from Argentina, Brazil, Poland and Russia and the talks remained successful beyond our expectations as these foreign buyers are approaching us seriously," said Chief Co-ordinator, Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Associations (Prgmea), Ijaz A Khokhar, who is also participating in the exhibition.
He said Prgmea had decided to send its trade delegation to the Brazil Fair next year in January with a view to finalise deals with the South American businessmen. "The South American buyers have shown interests in Pakistani products and they also invited the Prgmea members to participate in the Brazil Fair in January next year," he added.
Khokhar said the exporters wanted to scale down the increasing dependency on the US market. "Dependency on North American market should not be our priority," he added.
He was of the view that the Latin American markets offered huge opportunities and the local exporters would take full advantage of it to increase their business scales. He said that the Pakistani exporters would finalise business deals with South American traders during their visit to Brazil Fair. Khokhar said that some buyers had also shown interest in visiting the manufacturing units of the country's key industrial cities.
Expressing optimism, he said "buyers are likely to pay direct visit to the manufacturing units". Lauding the government efforts to organise such a successful event, he said that the exhibition had portrayed positive image of Pakistan.
He informed that the Prgmea delegation would also visit India's 'Source Fair' in Delhi as the Indian entrepreneurs had extended an invitation to Pakistani traders to participate in the show. Khokhar also lauded the efforts of Chief Executive, Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP), Tariq Puri to organise such a big event with scores of foreign delegations. He said the Pakistan's Commercial Consular in Brazil, Syed Tajammal Hussain, Commercial Consular in Russia, Ilyas Ghori and Iftikhar Ali Shallwani in Argentina played a key role in today's talks with foreign delegations.