Pakistan Textile Industry Should Improve Its Own Development Capability

Pakistan polyester fiber group recently said that, compared with competitors, 6.5% of import tariffs only reduced the pressure of Pakistan's expanding business expenses.

The group pointed out that Pakistan's business expenses have been expanding. The reasons include: the backwardness of infrastructure, the expansion of pportation costs, the high port costs of liquid chemical products, the instability of electricity supply, the unsound distribution channels of Engineering commodities, the high labor cost and the low productivity. The upstream chemical industry is not developed, and chemical products must be imported. Therefore, high cost and high freight rates will be generated, as well as multiple taxes and relatively high cost of loans.

In the region, the price of PSF in Pakistan is near the low end. In 2007, the average price of PSF in China was 95.6 rupees per kilogram, while India was 92.3 rupees, and the price in China was 90.4 rupees per kilogram.

In fact, the PSF industry in these countries is protected by the same import tariff.

No country is a zero tariff.

The export of Pakistan is practically zero tariff. In the whole production chain, domestic and downstream textile enterprises enjoy the exemption from tariff and tax regulations (DTRE) for raw materials purchased from export products.

As PSF users get such a convenient policy, exporters can enjoy zero tariff on imported raw materials.

The consumption of man-made fibers in Pakistan is lower than that in developed countries, but it is very close to other developing countries.

The low consumption of man-made fibers in Pakistan is due to the low consumption of industrial textiles and non textile applications (such as automobile industry, civil textile, etc.), and the downstream textile industry lacks sales channels and technologies. Downstream textile enterprises lack the machinery for producing high-end products, and the Pakistan textile industry belongs to the low-end product industry.

In the past, the domestic PSF industry produced many kinds of special PSF products, but the downstream textile industry did not have proper equipment, and could not produce and sell professional products.

The per capita PSF consumption in Pakistan is 3.12 kilograms, compared to 0.64 kilograms in India.

The group said that the domestic textile industry must admit such a fact that they need to solve many practical problems in order to improve the situation in the textile industry. They should not rely on the government to help them out of the predicament every year.