Mr Aamir Fayyaz, Chairman APTMA for the much needed boost in textile industry has urged Dr Shamshad Akhtar, Minister of Finance, Revenue and Economic affairs to take serious steps to build an infrastructure at the rate of $1 billion per annum for the garment sector and to encourage investment in textile sector cover indirect exports under the LTFF, Long Term Finance Facility.
In a letter to the minister he said that these initiative steps would improvise and increase supply of basic textile to the domestic value added sector.
As compared to the global investment of $102 billion, Pakistan has only witnessed a small investment of $2 billion in textile machinery import. According to statistics, processing machinery imports have increased to 38% in 2017, spinning machines 18%, knitwear machines 15%, sewing machines 14%, MMF manufacturing machines 5% and weaving machines 10%. The production efficiencies and competitiveness have been shifted to competing countries since BMR and Greenfield projects have been creating constraints for the Pakistan textile industry investment initiatives. Whereas, other countries textile industry has made huge investments under several incentive schemes.
To overcome the huge trade deficit, it is now imperative to enable Pakistan textile industry to undertake BMR and Greenfield investments to generate export surplus.
State Bank of Pakistan LTFF providing long term loans for import machinery does not facilitate indirect exporters depriving them and the state from improvising export trade.