July 21, 2007	Saturday	Rajab 05, 1428

KARACHI, July 20: The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) has expressed the hope that the measures announced by Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan will ensure long-term benefit to Pakistan’s export trade. It will also address the long-standing and pressing issues of common concern for the exporting and manufacturing sectors, which strive to enhance the foreign trade capacity of the country.

In a statement on Friday, the acting Aptma chairman Iqbal Ibrahim was confident that these measures would benefit the export trade and also the economy as a whole.

“The steps announced will ensure Pakistan’s competitiveness in the global market. He, however, urged the government to address the pending issues in the forthcoming textile policy to overcome the prevailing textile industry crisis so that the industry was able to effectively avail measures announced in the Trade Policy by making further investment to create exportable surplus.

He reminded that many of these proposals were offered for incorporation in the policy. He referred to long-term financing of export-oriented projects (LTF-EOP) for compact spinning and locally manufactured machinery.

The export-oriented units (EOUs) will essentially have same incentives as available to units in export processing zones. Existing units exporting at least 80 per cent of their production shall be eligible for registration. New units to be registered may be asked to export 100 per cent of their products.

He also lauded the continuation of Research and Development (R&D) rebate for home textiles and garments, training institutes for farmers and ginners for contamination free cotton, aggressive trade diplomacy, tariff rationalisation, strengthening of domestic trade, assistance for foreign offices of the exporters, hiring international consultants and social and environmental compliance.