Team Vigour Impex was invited at the Principal Office by Mr. Anis-ul-Haq, Acting Secretary General, APTMA along with Mr. Abdul Waheed. From Vigour Impex the team included Mr. Awais Kashif, Chief Operating Officer and the departmental heads of local yarn sales, export and import yarn sales, local and export fabric sales, home textiles sales, garment sales and business development department.
The agenda of the meeting was to discuss on how we can set certain new benchmarks and improve the industry in becoming more competitive and viable in comparison to other competing countries. The meeting was part of a general research activity initiated by the Government, where APTMA has been tasked with gathering general feedback from Industry leaders.
Some of the ideas put forth by the officials of Vigour Impex to APTMA as operationally observed where in order to bring an improvement in the value chain of the country, we need to focus towards increasing the overall yield of our cotton, where we need to focus on both organic and contamination free cotton, this will immensely add value to the chain. Quantity of crop output needs to be increased, along with investment in R&D activities of seed development needs to be paid attention to with utmost priority.
Investment in machinery such as Autocoro and MVS and sustaining the growth can drastically increase the quality output which again adds substantial value to the yarn being manufactured and used for further high up in the chain.
Much of the yarn is getting exported and as a nation we are imported value added products back in the country such as made ups of home textiles and towels and garments. We need to start producing finer counts which we used to a decade back and enable the yarn to be utilized internally first to fulfill the needs of both value added exports and local utilization. The currency has devalued recently and in the the last 10 months a 20% increase in garment production has been experienced but the actual benefit of devaluation will be seen in the next 6 months where the market will start adjusting itself against the importation of items to that of being exported.
We also suggested growing cotton in the desert regions or regions similar to conditions of Egypt where Egypt benefits from the growth of long staple fiber and markets it very well around the world.
We also suggested that roadshows should be conducted very aggressively where commercial attache should be engaged world over to organize meetings with importers / wholesalers / brands that quite well relate to that of our industry.
In order to become viable and competitive, the government also needs to work on providing free access to markets importing from Pakistan by signing MOUs with relevant countries and help promote trade in the unexplored markets that carry great potential and can prove profitable.
Government should promote R&D through establishing new research based institutes with the help of private public funding, where new development are promoted in innovating seeds, machinery, educational and vocational studies/training and marketing Pakistani Made products world over.
Capacity building is still of a concern for many in the industry, and because of which Pakistan lacks in achieving significant economies of scale where other countries like Vietnam, China and India take over. This effect price per unit and the value perception of a Pakistani textile product. To push for an increase re-investment in new units is to be highly encouraged from the government by provide tax free economic zones solely for export activities.
NICE