A number of constraints being faced by the textile sector and the delay in implementing various official decisions have resulted in slow realization of the exports and foreign investment potentials.

Officials in the ministry of commerce concede that the delay in implementing various decisions including directives given at the highest level, restrict efforts to increase exports.

An example cited widely is that of garments cities in Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad. Though announced in the Trade Policy for 03-04, after approval by the Export Development Fund Board (EDFB) on May 7, 2004, no concrete move has been made on the project so far.

Interestingly, the reason given is ‘shortage of funds’ even when the EDFB had approved the proposal with funding of Rs1.4 billion. Only funds for land costing Rs89 million and additional expenditure of Rs4 million were sanctioned for the establishment of Faisalabad Garment City (FGC).

Only after a serious push by people at highest level, that a decision has been taken to set up immediately the three garments cities without wasting more time.

And those who matter made sure that Faisalabad garment city is established first and this led to making of a formal proposal by the ministry of textile to the Planning and Development Davison for approval.

The project will provide space for readymade factories, the in-house training centres, a testing laboratory, conference and exhibition hall, buyers offices and other facilities in line with the international standards of compliance.

In view of the recent elimination of textile quotas and subsequent opening up of international markets, many countries are investing in physical infrastructure to facilitate increased exports.

Similar cities are successfully operating in China, Singapore, Vietnam and Bangladesh. India is setting up large industrial parks.

“Keeping in view the objectives of the trade policy and textile vision, it is felt that we too need to increase the production capacity of value-added textile products in the shortest possible time”, the textile ministry wrote to the Planning Division on July 11, 2006.

The purpose is to provide facilities and necessary infrastructure to the textile sector with a view to promote the value-added garments (woven and knitted), home textiles, made ups and accessories for international markets.

According to the textile ministry, the following benefits will accrue from the setting of FGC: it will attract foreign investors who would be willing to rent state of the art manufacturing factories space rather than invest their capital in land, utilities and construction; increase the proportion of value-added products in textile exports; maximize the value of Pakistan’s cotton resources; generate employment; higher productivity and reduced wastage because of the in-house training and laboratory testing facilities provided by the proposed city. The city will acquire registration as a “corporate entity” and would become a cluster of manufacturing units.

The Faisalabad garment city will provide a minimum of 1,44,000 garments a day in 310 working days a year, with an export value of $180 million per annum. “These are minimum figures of production, value addition and price”, the ministry maintained.

The textiles city’s pay back period will be 10 years and seven months. The financial feasibility of the project has been carried out. It will be able to re-invest its generated funds within a period of two years, which according to the textile ministry, is another great attraction of the project.

More importantly, the city will contribute towards social uplift of the area and that an institutional infrastructure will be available in the shape of ‘garment city management and administration’, which will provide high quality training and testing facilities to the manufacturers.

About 9,000 new jobs will be created directly, and indirectly about 20,000 people will earn their living from the project. A large number of workers employed in these factories will be women.

The city will be 100 per cent export-oriented, and as such, has to meet the highest standards of social and environment compliance.

The factories will only be used as stitching units for garments. There will be no dyeing or chemical processes involved, and therefore, there would be no effluents from the operations.

The textile sector is the largest foreign exchange earner and its contribution to exports ranges between 65-68 per cent of the total merchandise exports.

The garment city is a textile manufacture project and factory space will be constructed by the government and made available to manufactures of value-added garments.

Being the fourth largest producers of cotton in the world, Pakistan has to utilise its cotton resources to the maximum by producing knitted and woven garments that can be exported world wide at competitive price.