Chairman All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Punjab) Ejaz Gohar
said there is a cotton shortage of 3 million bales in the country that
ordinarily the spinners imported every year. However, since global
cotton rates were on a historic high of 80 cents per pound they would
not dare to import a single bale because of quota restriction on yarn
export and reluctance of the local value-added sector to buy yarn at
global rates. In fact, he added, inferior quality yarn from India was
priced 10 per cent higher than the rates of domestic yarn…Talking
to The News after emerging from a meeting, he said a local entrepreneur
imported 90 containers of yarn from India but to his dismay the length
of yarn was 10 per cent less and its quality was inferior to that of
Pakistani yarn. Over and above, he added, the rates of Indian yarn were
10 per cent higher. He said the importer had not been able to dispose
it in the local market…He said reduction in yarn quota had sent
a wrong signal to the global importers of yarn. He said in fact Chinese
and other importers had diverted their orders immediately to higher
priced Indian yarn immediately after the reduction in quota…The
APTMA (Punjab) Vice Chairman Akber Shiekh said the new quota
restrictions were more repressive than earlier quota restrictions. He
said earlier the government imposed restriction of 50000 ton on cotton
yarn from January 2010 till June 2010. However, the exporters were
allowed to register their orders on first come first serve bases for
every month till the ceiling of 50000 ton was reached. ..He said
under fresh restrictions of 35000 tons of yarn export the government
allowed export of 35000 tons on first come first serve basis without
any registration of orders, and once the quota limit was reached
further exports would be disallowed. ..This, he added, had
created uncertainty for yarn exporters. He said they were looking for
other markets because they were not sure whether their supplier would
be able to export the yarn if other suppliers succeeded in exporting
the quota amount earlier…Gohar regretted that the government of
Pakistan acted in haste without analyzing the exports statistic.
Interestingly, he added, the latest export figures suggested the export
of all sub-sectors of textile industry had increased impressively in
January 2010 compared with December 2009, barring exports of raw cotton
and cotton yarn that had declined by 31.27 per cent and 19.18 per cent
respectively…Otherwise, he added there had been an increase in,
exports of yarn other than cotton yarn (17.08 per cent), cotton cloth
(8.50 per cent), knit-wear (13.56 per cent), bed wear (10.66 per cent),
towel (61.63 per cent), readymade garments (25.25 per cent) and art,
silk and synthetic textile (7.12 per cent). He termed the apparel
sector hue and cry as baseless in the light of growth in exports of the
sector…He said an emergency meeting of APTMA had been called on
Friday March 5, 2010 in which proposals to confront the government in
court, resort to agitation or completely close down the spinning
industry for three months would be discussed”
Date:2/27/2010
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