PRGMEA demands establishment of ‘Trade House’ in Dubai

Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PRGMEA) has submitted the proposals to Prime Minister for bringing revolutionary changes for enhancing the export volume, said PRGMEA spokesperson Ijaz A Khokhar.
Talking to Business Recorder on Sunday he said that PRGMEA had suggested that a permanent display centre “Pakistan Trade House” should be established in Dubai to enhancing the export of Pakistani products. At present, our value-added products are unable to fetch high price because of the poor packaging and under the circumstances there was a great need of setting up product development and packaging centre in universities aimed at involving graduate students to help industry to improve the product line and packaging for better price, he said.
Ijaz said the government should announce special incentives for Research and Development (R&D) enabling the SMEs for up-gradation of machinery, innovation of new products and the compliance of issues. At this juncture there was a need of formulating an aggressive marketing plan for garment export for gaining maximum benefits of GSP status, he said. Ijaz said a high power committee comprising public and private sector in the name of “Garment Export Promotion Council” should be constituted for monitoring all garment exports activity and policy-making for maximising exports.
Textile industry is the only sector that had shown 10.5 percent growth during 2014-15 despite of internal and external challenges such as shortage of utilities and blockage of refunds adding that total apparel export (woven and knitted) had jumped to US 4.5 billion dollars, he revealed.
Ijaz said that currently garment sector had a very limited product range for export market because of non-availability of latest fabric locally whereas foreign buyers were demanding new garments based on G3 and G4 and technical fabric material which were not available and produced by Pakistani textile weavers so far.
The latest raw material and accessories should be imported for value addition locally and by use of the facility Pakistani garments could fetch rapid growth which will be an additional foreign exchange earning for Pakistan, he said.
The spokesperson further stated that we have requested the government that import of fabric should be allowed under SRO 492 instead of DTRE which is very complicated and only 2 percent exporters can avail importation under DTRE facility while 97 percent SME sector can only be facilitated under SRO-492 which was in practice in the past.