Zardari for declaring 2011 'Textile Year'

President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday called for declaring 2011 as "Textile Year" to substantially increase cotton cultivation, develop new and high yielding varieties of cotton and attract robust investment to promote textile industry in the country.
During the "Textile Year" the state land in the command area of new dams being built in Sindh and Balochistan will be distributed free among the poor women of the area for growing cotton. He said this while addressing All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) Annual Dinner here at the Aiwan-e-Sadr, which was attended among others by Chairman Aptma, ministers, members of parliament, representatives of Aptma and business delegates.
Spokesperson to the President, Farhatullah Babar said the President commented on the challenges facing the country and said that the country was passing through difficult economic times. He said that global recession, shortage of energy, rising expectations, extremism and unwillingness to pay taxes have all contributed to our economic problems. The President asked for finding innovative ways to tackle the situation.
The President stated that the government adopted the policy of public-private partnership for rapid development, reduction in poverty and employment opportunities in the country.
The President highlighted the importance of textile sector in the economic development of Pakistan and said that the setting up of garment cities in Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad was recognition of the importance the government accorded to the textile sector.
The spokesperson said that the President expressed the hope that these projects would place Pakistan among the leading nations producing and exporting textile value added products and would also contribute to raising Pakistan's share in world textile trade.
The President said the government introduced many policies and these policies had shown positive results, adding that this was also responsibility of the industry to come forward and take the ownership of the policies so that continuity of the successful policies could continue.
At that time, Industry should have stepped forward to own the policy and should not have allowed the new government to reverse, the President said and regretted that the Industry failed to do so, resulting in the reversal of a policy which proved to detriment to the interests of the country.
The President said that economic growth of the country is being hampered by the consistent war against militancy and weak law and order situation in the country. Pakistan's economy suffered a huge loss of over 50 billion dollars over the past eight years due to the war against militancy, the President said and added that the image of the country has also been tarnished by the militants and terrorists killing innocent people.
The President expressed the confidence that the textile industry would fully avail of the free market opportunity and do its best in terms of performance and investment. "We will take Aptma on board on all economic and investment matters. One such area where public-private co-ordination is needed is market access", he said. The President also congratulated and welcomed the new Ministers on the occasion.