Finance minister urged to help build garment sector

LAHORE: The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) Chairman Aamir Fayyaz in a letter addressed to Finance, Revenue and Economic Affairs Minister Dr Shamshad Akhtar on Wednesday sought enabling environment to boost investment in textile industry.

He has urged the minister to take steps in building up garment sector infrastructure at the rate of $1 billion per annum and cover indirect exports under the Long Term Finance Facility (LTFF) scheme to encourage investment in the textile sector. He said this initiative would result in better and increased supply of basic textiles to the domestic value-added sector.

He said import of textile machinery has increased world over according to data. “Import of processing machinery increased to 38 percent globally in 2017 against 2013 followed by spinning machinery (18 percent), sewing machines (14 percent), knitwear machines (15 percent), weaving machines (10 percent), and MMF manufacturing machines (five percent).”

The global investment in textile industry has reached $102 billion. However, the textile industry in Pakistan has not been able to undertake investment initiatives in proper manner and has witnessed a meagre investment of $2 billion during these years.

Textile industry in Pakistan has been facing constraints under BMR and Greenfield projects, whereas textile producing countries in the region have made huge investments under various incentive schemes. Consequently, he said, production efficiencies have been shifted to our competing countries.

He said there has been serious decline in textile export during the last four years and it was imperative that the government enabled the industry to undertake BMR and Greenfield investments to generate exportable surplus to overcome the huge trade deficit.

State Bank of Pakistan’s LTFF that provides funds on long-term basis for import of machinery does not cover indirect exporters and they are deprived of the incentive terms of the investment scheme, which needed to be covered under this scheme to boost exports, the Aptma chairman said in his letter.