FAISALABAD, June 7: Textile exporters will lose much of foreign markets if the government fails to announce a sound relief package for them.

This fear was expressed by industrialists at an emergent meeting of the Pakistan Textile Exporters Association, Garments City Faisalabad and the Faisalabad Dry Port Trust here on Wednesday.

Office-holders of industrialists’ organisations observed that some vested interests were trying to give the country an import-oriented status.

Fearing closure of industries in the wake of brewing crisis, they demanded a level playing field with a substantial decrease in the cost of production.

PTEA chief Rana Arif Tauseef, although welcomed incentives offered to agriculture and other sectors, feared that required financial resources won’t be available to dish out these incentives and implement the record public sector development programme of Rs320 billion without textile sector’s contribution to the national economy.

Underlining the textile sector importance, he said its share in the national economy was 65 per cent while it was also providing maximum jobs to the unemployed youth.

He said Pakistani exporters were fully prepared to compete exporters of other countries, but they could not face powerful governments that were extending maximum incentives to their exporters.

Exporters, he said, had been persistently identifying these complications and disparities in the production cost with a request to bail out the textile sector.

He cautioned that the negative impact of this situation would start revealing in next few months making it difficult for exporters to tackle it alone.

FDPT chairman Muhammad Sadiq Chaudhry said that textile exporters had invested heavily to refurbish and expand industrial units to improve their quality and quantity to compete in global markets.

Despite best efforts of textile exporters, he said only 18 per cent growth was achieved as against the expected increase of 32 per cent.

Pakistan, he said, was now producing high quality textile products, but our regional competitors, including China, India and Bangladesh, were flooding international markets with their cheap products with the help of their governments.

Our competitors had an edge of cheap electricity, gas and loans in addition to subsidies, which were being extended to them in shape of technical measures.

While exporters claimed that the production cost was manifold in Pakistan as compared to other countries because of continuous increase in rates of gas, electricity and bank loans.

They demanded removal of the Export Development Fund (EDF) levy and deferment of loan repayments for two to three years to ensure sustained economic growth and achieving export targets.

Faisalabad’s Garments City chairman Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed urged President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to take immediate measures to redress grievances of textile exporters.

He said the repayment of loan instalments had also become a formidable challenge to textile exporters as loan rates had gone much high, putting additional burden on them.