10 April 2004	Saturday	19 Safar 1425

KARACHI, April 9: Readymade garment exports dropped sharply by 26 per cent in terms of quantity and 8.5 per cent in terms of dollars during the last nine months of the current financial year , signalling a possible fallout effect of the rise in exports of cotton cloth and yarn.

Both yarn and cloth have started showing upward export trends recently. Yarn exports are up by over 31 per cent in March over February and more than 19 per cent over March last year.

Cloth export during March is up by over 20 per cent as against February and 25 per cent more than what was exported in March last year.

Garment and hosiery merchants speak of shortages of cloth and yarn in the domestic market and a price hike that are making their business difficult. Garment exporters speak of problems but are not aware that there has been a sharp drop in export volume. "Let me check the figures of woven and knit category before I offer any comments," a top textile businessman said.

Knitwear has maintained its export tempo and exceeded the $1.20 billion mark in the last nine months mainly because of the previous orders in hand. But the garment business has apparently been hit hard and no plausible explanations are available for its fall.

Official statistics show volume of garments fell to 20.230 million dozens during the period July-March 2003-04 from 27.197 million dozens during July-March 2002-03. Value wise, the loss of readymade garment exports is 8.55 per cent in dollar terms and 10.43 per cent in rupee terms.

Garments are one of the five items belonging to a billion-dollar club of the textile groups. The other four items of this group are yarn, cloth, knitwear and bedwear. In the last nine months, garment exports fetched $726.85 million as against $794.82 million in the same period last year.

Aziz Memon, chairman of the Textile Quota Management Advisory Council, considers it a temporary phenomenon before December 2004 after which all textile export quotas are to be dismantled.

"Garment exporters are at present preparing for a long-term business vision after December 2004 when they would be in the mainstream of global export competition after dismantling of quota regime," he said.

Mr Memon is confident that in the next three months the export of garments will exceed $400 million and total garment exports will be over and above $1 billion in the current fiscal year.

Ahmad Kamal Karsaz, a former chairman of the Pakistan Hosiery Association, said that his association had brought to notice of the Export Promotion Bureau the problems hosiery manufacturers and exporters were facing because of shortages and price hike of yarn in the domestic market.

Overall, the textile group export has shown a robust growth of 15.40 per cent in dollar terms during the last nine months of the current fiscal year. Textile products fetched $5.82 billion during the period under review as against $5 billion in the same period last year. Textile exports are confident of netting $7 billion by the end of June this year.

In the last nine months, the export of yarn amounts to $847.92 million, up by 22 per cent; cloth $1.20 billion, up by 27.50 per cent; knitwear $1.02 billion, up by 29.5 billion dollars; bedwear $1 billion, up by 12 per cent; towels $276.82 million, up 15 per cent; and tents and canvass $51.22 million, up by about three per cent.

Art silk and synthetic textile export is down marginally to $374 million, while madeup articles exports amount to $307 million. Textile manufacturers are still the single largest group of importers of machinery. In the last nine months, more than $406 million worth of machinery has been imported. Total import of textile machinery during the current fiscal year is expected to be of around $500 million or about Rs28.50 billion.

In a major revamping and modernization operation, the textile industry invested over $3 billion during the last about four years. Industry watchers said that total investment in the textile industry during the last four years should be around $4.5 billion that included the installation of imported machinery and acquisition of machines and equipment from the local engineering industry.

The textile industry is preparing for a mainstream global competition after December 2004 when Pakistan's exports would be exposed to products from all countries that include China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia where production cost is estimated to be less than that of Pakistan.