FAISALABAD, Sept 20: The Federal Minister for Textile Industry, Mushtaq Ali Cheema on Monday said that the government was fully prepared for the promotion and modernization of textile sector to strengthen the national economy and to achieve the objective of Textile Vision 2005.

Addressing to the participants of a meeting of the Faisalabad Industrial Estate Development and Management Company (FIEDMC) here on Monday, he said government was fully aware of the importance of textile sector.

+ACI-Only textile sector have potential to achieve the accelerated growth rate of our future needs and it was in this context that provincial and federal governments have announced mega projects of textile and garment cities for Faisalabad.

He said that maximum attention was being paid to upgrade and modernize weaving sector with state of the art, air-jet looms and latest technological equipment to usher the textile sector in the new global trade scenario in 2005.

He said that the power-loom sector also needed utmost attention of the government for replacement of the old and odd power looms with that of shuttle-less automatic looms.

At present over 250,000 power looms are operating in the un-organized sector out of which 125,000 are installed in Faisalabad alone. He said that the textile ministry would try its best to arrange the soft term loans from banks and financial institutions for the modernization of the powerlooms.

Commenting over the developmental activities in Faisalabad, the minister said that he was in constant touch with prime minister, Shaukat Aziz and Chief Minister Punjab, Pervaiz Elahi, to get special development package for Faisalabad.

About the industrial development in Faisalabad, the minister said that the federal government had already sanctioned the project of 'Garment City' for Faisalabad while the Punjab government has also approved the plan for the establishment of an industrial estate near Faisalabad, right from Sahianwala interchange to Sargodha road where this industrial estate will be established in 3325 acres of land in the near future.

Mr Cheema pointed out that his ministry would try to boost the textile exports by giving lucrative incentives to the exporters and cheaper availability of the inputs to make the exports most competitive. He said the government would also try to help reduce the cost of production by affording lucrative incentives to the exporters and new investors.