New textile policy yet to be announced: government inaction hinders industry from availing GSP plus facility

The country's textile sector is midway stuck to carry on their global trade especially with the EU under the GSP Plus regime since the textile policy lapsed last month, industry sources said on Tuesday. "The government's stagnant approach towards the economy poses a big challenge to textile sector to deal with the global buyers for coming seasons," they said, adding that the federal textile ministry failed to reintroduce the textile policy to help the entire sector.
The textile policy, which was first introduce in 2009, lapsed on June 30, 2014, they said, adding that the government's ministry concerned had pledged to announce a fresh policy on July 2, yet the sector is without any official guidelines. Talking to Business Recorder, Chief Co-ordinator, Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufactures and Exporters Association (Prgmea), Ijaz A. Khokhar regretted that the entire textile sector is under stress for want of a policy that should help the industry's growth.
"Neither the government has evolved strategy to meet the utopian target of $1 billion textile export to the EU under the GSP plus facility nor has it reintroduced textile policy to make thing clear for the textile exporting sector," he criticised. In a real term, he said, the country's largest exporting sector is groping for a direction to break the stagnation. "We [textile sector] are without any textile policy as being a big sector it has lost the government's priorities," he said, suggesting that the textile ministry should be handed a bigger role.
He said the federal commerce ministry and its affiliated Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) are out of focus to streamline the country's economic growth. "Federal commerce ministry and TDAP are responsible for the economic stagnation," he said. Instead of taking a trade delegation to the EU to explore new markets within the union, he said the federal commerce minister alone travelled but fetched nothing for the country. He said the government should focus on Eastern Europe without wasting time to find new markets for its textile products under the GSP plus facility.
"Around 7 per cent textile export growth to the EU is a routine trend indicating that the GSP Plus is not paying off to the country economy," he said, adding that the public sector role is largely missing to push ahead the trade with the EU. He said the garments export however is a little encouraging among the value-added textile sector, but feared the production may not sustain for longer period if the government did not step up to help the ailing industry rejuvenate.
The country's total export of readymade garments stays $1.768 billion in July-May 2013-14, with mere a rise of $128 million (8 percent) from $1.640 billion in the same period last fiscal year, say Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). The export of readymade garments increased by $20.893 million (12.33 per cent) to $190.284 million In May 2014 from $169.391 million in May 2013, the PBS indicates. The quantity of readymade garments surged by 675, 000 (31 percent) to 2,886,000 dozens from in May 2014 from 2,211,000 dozens in May 2013, the figures say. In term of volume: readymade garments export grew by 2,359,000 dozens (10 per cent) to 26,987,000 dozens in July-May 2013-14 as compared to the commodity's export of 24,628,000 dozens in the same period last fiscal year, statistics suggest.