BRUSSELS, May 5: The European Union must provide Pakistan and other developing countries with special tariff support to ease problems of “fierce competition” following the liberalisation of world textile trade in 2005, Pakistan’s Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan said on Monday.

In separate bilateral talks with EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, the minister also repeated Pakistan’s demands for more flexibility in the application of EU textile quotas in 2003 and said Islamabad may be ready to renegotiate a 2001 trade-expanding textile pact with Brussels to secure better access to the EU market.

Humayun, who was a keynote speaker at a high-level EU textile industry conference, said industrialised nations must keep their pledge to liberalise world textiles trade in 2005 and resist the temptation to continue protection through “other” imaginative measures.”

The minister said the elimination of textile quotas in 18 months would generate “fierce competition” among textile and clothing exporters but also create “many windows of opportunity.” However, benefits of free trade would not be spread out evenly, with poorer countries losing out to the more competitive ones.

As such, special tariff help schemes would be essential. “The removal of quotas will leave a lot of developing countries with heavy reliance on textiles highly vulnerable to risk unless some support-measures are retained and strengthened in order to allow them to maintain their competitiveness,” Humayun insisted.

Underlining the importance of “concessional tariff regimes” in helping developing countries cope with increased competition, Humayun said special incentives such as those provided by the EU in its Generalised System of Preferences had helped Pakistan to step up its textile exports to Europe as well as encouraged “development as a whole.”

The minister also warned against the post-2005 utilisation of non-tariff barriers, including anti-dumping and countervailing duties to keep out developing countries’ textiles. “Textile exports from developing countries are repeatedly disrupted by initiation of such prolonged anti-dumping investigations which have a chilling effect on trade,” he cautioned.

The expected phasing out of quotas must also not be replaced by increasing restrictions based on environmental standards or labour compliance issues, he said.

In bilateral discussions with Lamy, Humayun “on his second visit to Brussels” reiterated demands that Pakistan’s textile exports to the EU in 2003 should benefit once again from a so-called “exceptional flexibility” clause under which countries can switch quotas between fast and slow-moving product categories.

Pakistan failed to secure such flexibility in 2002 but the European Commission and EU governments agreed that Islamabad could dip into its 2003 quotas to compensate for over-quota shipments made in the previous year.

Humayun said that he now wanted the EU to give Pakistan an extra 3,900 ton textile quota to make up for last year’s decision as well as the right to use the inter-category flexibility provisions.

“The EU response is expected to be positive,” Humayun told Dawn, adding that he had also once again told Lamy that he wanted a constructive and early resolution of the EU anti-dumping investigation into Pakistan’s exports of bedlinen to the EU.

Sources say the conclusion of a voluntary restraint pact between Pakistani bedlinen exporters and the EU would be one solution to a long-running problem.

Pakistan has also said it is willing to renegotiate a “memorandum of understanding” on textile trade agreed with the EU in 2001.

Renegotiating the deal, under which both sides are committed to opening up their markets to each others’ textile exports, will mean an increase in Pakistan’s textile exports to the EU in 2003 and 2004, allowing Pakistani exporters to get a foothold in the EU market ahead of the 2005 trade liberalisation.