October 18, 2006	Wednesday	Ramazan 24, 1427

KARACHI, Oct 17: China is taking a major offensive to counter the growing pressures from the US and the European Union on its rapidly rising trade and is organising the second Asian apparel round table conference next March for which a meeting of clothing and apparel association leaders from Asian countries, including Pakistan, is being held on October 25 in Shanghai to work out an agenda.

After the first such Asian apparel round table held in March this year in Beijing, the participating leaders of apparel and garments industry gave a call to Asian countries to achieve a “win-win situation for all”. “The cooperation among the apparel industry of Asian countries has become increasingly important,” asserted Abdur Rehman, Chairman of the Pakistan Readymade Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, South region. Mr Rehman attended the first Asian round table in March this year and is leaving for Shanghai on Thursday to attend the meeting on October 25 that will thrash out an agenda for the next March round table.

Readymade garments and apparel, however, remains a neglected sector by the government and financial institutions and therefore, according to Mr Rehman, had not been able to come up to a level where it was in Bangladesh, India and China. “We are caught up in a conflicting situation,” he explained about his participation in Chinese-sponsored Asian round table. “We support the Asian round table contention of striving to achieve a win-win position.” But then he said Pakistan faced a situation where it faced tough competition from China, India and Bangladesh in the US and EU markets because the three governments went out of the way to support their garment and apparel industry, while in Pakistan “we are not even consulted by the government in formulation of a textile policy”.

“We are the poor cousins of Pakistan’s textile industry as its leaders are fabulously rich spinners who sell their yarn and fabric to those foreign buyers who are our competitors,” the garment industry leader said. He agreed that all these issues were to be raised with the government but the purpose of talking on these matters in an international gathering was to include in the next agenda the factors of competitiveness of the garment and apparel industry.

Garment and apparel, he said, was a labour intensive industry that played a key role in poverty alleviation and fetched the maximum amount of foreign exchange in export trade. He quoted an international trade house, according to which the export of a bale of cotton fetched $119 million; yarn that was spun from a bale of cotton would give $253, while towel weaved from coarse yarn would fetch $434 and grey cloth $580. Finished cloth export will give the country $665, bedwear export $700 and readymade garments will generate $1,600, with a lot of employment.

Ladies were for the first time given employment opportunity in the textile industry and even now thousands of women are working in Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore, Faisalabad, Gujranwala and many other places in stitching cloths to make an honourable living.

In India, the garment industry is worth $50 billion and caters to $37 billion of domestic market and about $13 billion for export. He agreed that readymade garment and apparel was not in a position to compete with Chinese, Thai and other countries’ products in Pakistan market “because we are not competitive”.

As explained that a worker in Bangladesh garment factory was paid 1,400 taka as against a minimum of Rs4,000 in Pakistan. Workers’ wages in India and China are also lower than that of Pakistan. Add to this the burden of utility cost, transportation and financial charges, with frequent interruption in production process.

Mr Rehman hopes that the second Asian round table should address to more specific issues of the industry if the desire is really to achieve a win-win position for all the countries. His complaint is that the government ignored the garment industry when it drew up textile vision 2005 and has again kept the garments sector outside when a textile vision for 2015 is being prepared.

Mr Rehman agreed that a six per cent research and development given on garment export had been passed on to the foreign buyers last year. As many as 228 members of Prgmea claimed Rs1.36 billion R&D rebate against their declared export of Rs22.82 billion. “There has been a lot of abuse of this facility by textile exporters,” he said and disclosed that some of the businessmen filed a rebate refund claim which was far in excess of their export. He endorsed State Bank governor’s observation of detecting 3,000 such bogus claims.

He said that three to five per cent rebate being offered on export of fabrics and home textiles was hurting the garment industry, as this facility was being passed on to the foreign garment competitors of Pakistan. The eventual loser is Pakistan.