Engineered statistics

LAHORE: Pakistani labour is going through torrid times as businesses, particularly the industries are under pressure. The government is not in a position to help, but some business associations over blow the unemployment issue to get concessions for their sector.

This is not helping the cause of the country as it creates more panic among those still employed. It also empowers entrepreneurs to exploit the beleaguered employees. Many parameters belie these false claims. Textile is the largest employer of the manufacturing sector of Pakistan.

Total workforce employed by the manufacturing sectors of Pakistan is 11.68 million. Textiles provide employment to 40 percent of this workforce that comes to 4.672 million. This is in line with workers employed by this sector in other textile exporting economies. China, the largest exporter and producer of textiles, has a textile workforce of 15 million. Bangladesh, the second largest exporter after China, has 4 million textile workers.

Vietnam, which is close to Bangladesh in textile and garment exports and ranked third in the world employ’s 3 million textile workers. Pakistan’s textile exports are less than half that of Bangladesh and Vietnam, still the number of textile workers in the country are higher than both these countries.

There are many textile associations representing different sub-sectors of textiles. The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) represents around 350 spinning and weaving mills, the Pakistan Ready Made Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PRGMEA) represents the exporters of woven apparel.

Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers Association (PHMA) exports knitted garments. Then there are associations of towel exporters and bedwear exporters. Pakistan’s top three exports in textiles come from the members of PHMA, PRGMEA and bed wear associations, while members of APTMA are the fourth largest exporters. In terms of employment, the largest employment is provided by PHMA and PRGMEA.

Exporters falling under these two associations employ almost 2/3rd of the total textile labour force. Mills falling under APTMA provide at most 10 percent of total textile employment. Pakistan’s textile sector is operating under dual pressure. On being the bad economic situation of the country and other being the global recession and high inflation.

Textile products generally are the first casualty in case of recession, as consumers short of resources first axe clothing and bedding. Under these circumstances, it was expected that Pakistan’s textile industry would suffer badly and lay off workers as well.

If we analyse the situation in Pakistan, the worst hit sub-sectors of textiles are spinners and weavers. Most mills are operating at truncated capacities and some have even closed.

But since the workers in these sectors are in small numbers, the layoffs do not have a significant impact on overall textile unemployment. The garment and knitwear exports are also down, but knitwear exports are down by 2.93 percent in the first seven months of this fiscal year and that of readymade garments by 1.71 percent.

So the retrenchments were not on a large scale. It comes as a shock when APTMA leaders continue to claim that 7 million textile workers have lost their job, which is almost 3 million more than the total textile workforce in Pakistan.

Under the current scenario such misleading statistics create panic in the already depressed labour market of the country. By the way, the total global textile workforce is a little above 90 million and Pakistani textiles account for less than 1.5 percent of global textile trade.