KARACHI, April 25: Textile Industry Minister Mushtaq Ali Cheema on Tuesday offered to provide rent-free developed land and building to all multinational companies interested in setting up ladies garment manufacturing units in Pakistan.

Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of Igatex-2006 at the Karachi Expo Centre, the minister said that after the expiry of Multi-Fibre Agreement last year, textiles and clothing industry had started shifting from the West to South Asian countries, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, China and Sri Lanka.

He said Pakistan had a good start as far as textiles and garments were concerned. “However, there is still a lot of room for expanding and increasing our textile and clothing exports.”

Mr Cheema said Pakistan was the only country that had huge exportable surplus of textiles and clothing because around 85 per cent of its total production was available for export.

He said around 60 per cent of exports was of textile products and 48 per cent of industrial production came from textiles and clothing, while this sector provided employment to 38 per cent of total industrial workforce.

The minister said the country was the fourth largest cotton producer and the third highest consumer of cotton in the world. But he said the country lagged behind in the consumption of man-made fibre and added that it should be improved. The minister pointed out that another weak area was the production ladies garments. He said the worldwide production of ladies garments stood at 60 per cent and that of men at 40 per cent.

Therefore, he said any multinational company interested in establishing ladies garment units in garment cities planned in Karachi, Faisalabad and Lahore would be given rent-free factory premises and land fully developed with basic infrastructure.

He said the textile city being set up in Karachi was in advanced stage and would provide state-of-the-art infrastructure facilities to produce quality goods for exports.

Mr Cheema invited the foreign textile machinery exhibitors to invest and market their products in Pakistan. He further said that after two years IGATEX would be held at the Lahore Expo Centre which was in advanced stage of completion.

Aasim A. Siddiqui, managing director of Pegasus Consultancy, which has been organising Igatex for the last four years, said this year’s fair had attracted over 400 exhibiting companies from 30 countries, making it the largest exhibition of the country.

He said the presence of foreign textile machinery associations at the fair showed that it provided a growing marketplace to their products.

Mr Siddqui said that another feature of the Igatex-2006 was a high-level roundtable discussion on “The role of technology in the development of textile industry in Pakistan and South Asia in the context of the WTO environment”.

He said the exhibition had drawn visitors from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Middle East, Europe and African countries.

Mr Siddqui pointed out that MoU with VDMA of Germany and ACIMIT of Italy for long-term collaboration were being signed. He thanked KCCI President Haroon Farooqi for extending support to this mega event of textile machinery.