Pakistani companies response very poor: Enlisting with ITC
By Parvaiz Ishfaq Rana
KARACHI, Sept 22: Rupa Ganguli, a consultant on international trade in textiles and clothing, on Thursday expressed her utter dismay over the lukewarm response from Pakistani companies and trade bodies for enlisting themselves with the International Trade Centre (ITC), a daughter organization of the WTO and the UNCTAD.
Talking to a group of journalists on the sidelines of a ‘textile and garment conference’ held in conjunction with the InStyle Pakistan 2005 exhibition at the Karachi Expo Centre, she said there had been overwhelming response from all textiles and clothing producing nations except Pakistan.
“It is very strange that no Pakistani textile trade body or organization has bothered to enlist itself with the ITC that provides technical assistance and solutions to help build up capacity and other services for textiles and clothing at the global level,” observed Ms Ganguli.
It could be easily judged from the fact that two major textile producing provinces of China, which cater to up to 50 per cent of global needs of textiles and clothing, have enlisted themselves with the ITC to get benefit from a wide range of services offered at the international level, she asserted.
Ms Ganguli said the ITC worked in six major areas, including production and marketing development and development of trade support services, and added that the centre would soon provide services for market exploration by arranging buyer and seller meetings or business to business meetings.
She said so far only one Pakistani company — Kings Apparel — had enlisted itself with the ITC. Against this, the consultant said, there had been overwhelming response from companies and trade bodies from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, China, Thailand, Latin America, Turkey, Iran, the European Union and East Europe.
Other areas where the ITC provides services include trade information, human resource development, international purchase and supply management and needs for objective progress and designs for trade promotion. All these areas, she said, were very important for survival in the free world market. The centre also assists in clothing manufacturing by SMEs. A wide range of tools and services are introduced to help build up capacity of textiles and clothing.
Ms Ganguli expressed her desire to have a direct contact with Pakistan textile trade bodies so that they could be convinced to enlist themselves and their members with the ITC and join other nations at a forum of international level.
Responding to a question, she said the ITC also provided research and development services and had a Data Bank but it entirely depended on requirement of individual company or trade body.
The main feature of the conference during the first session was the presence of Naseem Javed, who is a well-known name in the international business circles and is an authority in branding. Speaking on the topic “Turbo-change exports via building textile brands”, Mr Javed urged upon business to have individual corporate identity through utilization of latest technology advancements, including internet.
The second session of the conference was addressed by several international and local speakers, including Ms Rupa Ganguli from Switzerland, Danish Javed and Deepak Perwan from Pakistan, Jitendra Sodhi from India and Khalid Saleem Zahid from the UK.
During the second day of the exhibition international buyers from 20 countries continued their business meetings with the exhibitors. With their procurement budgets the buyers viewed the InStyle exhibition as a perfect platform where the two sides are expected to reach large-scale export orders to conventional and unconventional markets of the world.
