Textiles and Garments

This group holds the biggest share of manufacturing in the country as well as in
exports contributing 10.5 percent to GDP, 68 percent to exports and employing 38 percent of all industrial workers in 2003-04.
In anticipation of potential opportunities for Pakistan's exports in the post-textiles quota environment, and to move towards greater value addition, the sector has undergone a major transformation with nearly US$ 4 billion invested since 2000 in new technologies and machinery. Currently, the share of yarn and fabrics in textile exports has declined from 70 percent in the nineties to 30 percent in 2003, with made-ups taking the rest.
The economies of agglomeration and cluster effects are important factors in
capturing externalities and spillovers, and reducing costs of production. Four Textile Cities and Two Garment Cities are planned to be set up during MTDF. These will be equipped with quality testing laboratories, design centres, and warehousing facilities apart from excellent communications and other infrastructure.

Other major constraints and challenges at present are:
i) Contamination of cotton due to improper picking and storage, hence low
value addition
ii) Low technology base and antiquated machinery in the ginning segment,
which needs major re-building and modernisation
iii) Making continuous bleaching process more widespread, without which
homogeneous and uniform dye fixation becomes difficult
iv) Review of policies of protections given to the local man made fiber industry
and raw material, which increases cost of blended fabrics.
v) Need to shift to processes and technology for higher density fabrics, by
moving away from existing power looms to high speed shuttle-less looms, air
jet looms and projectile looms.
vi) Low size of design base,. Computer Aided Design ( CAD)
vii) Wider compliance for ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 is required.

Blended fabrics and garments or ‘high performance wear’ materials are increasing
their share of world trade, A major challenge to textile and garments exports is appearing in the form of non-tariff issues such as social and environmental compliance, which is being resorted to by major importing regions such as the EU and USA. It would be necessary,
therefore, to reduce tariffs on high quality dyes and dyes not made in Pakistan. This would assist meeting environmental barriers to exports.