LAHORE: Pakistan’s official international trade figures for the six months from April to September show that the country has lost $1.2bn in textile exports on account of acute energy shortages in Punjab.

“If this trend persists over the rest of the current financial year, the textile export losses will go up to $2.2bn,” S M Tanvir, chairman of the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma), told a news conference called in anticipation of the approval of the new five-year textile policy by the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) on Thursday.

He said no new investment was being made in the textile industry because of the energy crunch and 52pc rise in the cost of doing business on account of raised electricity prices. He said the industry was ready to invest $1bn a year in new capacities, provided the government guaranteed uninterrupted supply of gas and electricity to the factory.

“If this happens, the industry will double its exports to $26bn in five years,” Mr Tanvir said.

He said Pakistan had lagged far behind its regional rivals like India and Bangladesh in expanding its basic textile manufacturing capacity since 2006. Pakistan had added 2.7m new spindles during these years for replacing old machines, on the other hand, Bangladesh with no cotton production had installed additional capacity of 3m spindles and India added 18.5m spindles, he said, adding Pakistan had hardly added 5,544 shuttleless looms as against 30,204 by Bangladesh and 46,881 by India.

“This means we did not create jobs that we could and we did not fetch export dollars. It means we gave our rivals the opportunity to create millions of jobs that we could create in Pakistan but did not; it also means that we let our rivals earn billions of export dollars that we could fetch but did not,” he added.

The Aptma chief said the unprecedented increase in energy tariff had proved to be the last straw on industry’s back. Also, he said, the exchange rate appreciation had further eroded viability of the export-oriented industry, particularly in Punjab which had 70pc mills.

According to him, the present uncertainty was triggering further due to the delay in the announcement of textile policy and decision on uninterrupted energy supply to the Punjab-based textile industry during this winter.

He urged Prime Ministerial Committee on Textile Industry’s chairman Ishaq Dar, who is also finance minister, to prioritise the textile industry in gas and electricity supplies to protect exports, jobs and investments

Aptma-Punjab chairman Seth Akber said the government would not require loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) if it helped the textile industry operate at its optimal capacity and bring in additional billions of dollars.

Also present on the occasion were Aptma leaders Syed Ali Ahsan and Wisal Monnoo.

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2014

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