LAHORE, Jan 16: The Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PRGMEA) has urged the government to cap the utility charges for textile industry for three years to enable exporters quote their buyers prices of the products for at least one year.

In a letter addressed to the ministers of commerce and textile on Tuesday, PRGMEA chairman Ijaz Khokhar said ever since the introduction of textile value-added garments quota-free regime, the industry had been facing numerous problems in production, such as technological developments, change in policies and macro-economic factors, social issues in the industrial markets and shifting market structure of the world textile industry.

“It has been almost the exporters’ personal effort that the industry has been procuring orders from importers by quoting prices with one year validity.”

The current economic scenario of the country is such that even the charges relating to utility services are now changed too often, and the textile industry is confused as to how to satisfy buyers since they had been accepting prices to remain static during the whole year, the letter said, adding earlier these charges did not change for more than a decade or so when we used to send quotations with validity for a year from Jan 1 of a year ending on Dec 31 of the same year.

“On receipt of an order, the buyers obviously expect validity for at least one year as it used to be before the WTO textile quota free regime. It is thus important that the government caps the utility charges of gas, electricity, water and telephones at least for three years to give us an opportunity to quote a year’s prices to continue doing international business.

“Various studies being carried out by the UNDP, UNIDO, SMEDA, USAID, the ministries of commerce, textile and industries are suggesting employment of foreign consultants to study and recommend steps suitable to help the textile value-added industry regain its lost share in the international market. But no practical help to upgrade our production is visible so far whereas our competitors are continuously making headway in increasing exports.

Since time is running short and the textile industry is unable to quote prices to foreign buyers to continue at least for a period of one year which was the normal procedure in the past, he has requested the two ministers to fix a meeting with the representatives of the apparel industry at the earliest so that they can explain their difficulties.