Textile exporters may face Rs 4.8 billion loss: foreign firms refuse export consignme

[LahoreEstate]

ASMA RAZAQ
ISLAMABAD (March 17 2009): The textile exports may face loss of Rs 4.8 billion as the foreign companies of EU, Russia and US have refused to take the Pakistani textile products due to economic recession. According to the sources, 200 containers carrying textile consignment from Pakistan have stranded in Russia, EU and US. "Each container is carrying textile goods of worth $0.3 million and the textile sector has to face a loss of $60 million," an exporter said.

"Unfortunately, most of the foreign buyers of our textile products that belong to EU and US defaulted all of the sudden and they refused to receive our containers carrying the textile goods they had ordered. On the other hand, our textile exporters had to face a huge loss in Russia when suddenly, the Russian Ruble depreciated by 40 per cent as compared to Dollar", he said.

He said that already the textile industry was suffering from high cost of production due to constant increase in gas and electricity tariff while the average export target of textile products for current fiscal (2008-09) has been set at $11 billion or to an average $923 million per month by government.

Textile exports of the country during the first seven months of the current financial year decreased by 3.79 per cent as compared to the corresponding period of 2007-08. Exports of textile products during January-July (2008-09) were recorded at 5.82 billion dollars as compared to exports of 6.05 billion dollars registered during July-January (2007-08).

Similarly, the textile exports during the month of January 2009 decreased by 8.98 per cent as compared to December 2008. Exports during January 2009 were of $753.9 million as compared to exports of $720.3 million recorded during December 2008.

During the last month, gas supply to the industrial areas decreased by 50 per cent. The exporter said that the textile sector needs the continuous supply of gas to run the captive power plants as well as boiler. The shortage of gas and electricity has already discouraged the foreign investors, while most of the textile industrialists, by keeping this thing in view, are shifting their businesses to Bangladesh and India.

The exporter said, "Our textile exports are losing the competitiveness in the international market. That is why our foreign export orders have reduced by 20-25 per cent as compared to the last year. Due to decrease in foreign export orders, our industrialists have reduced the buying of cotton from the ginning factories. That is why the ginners have unsold stocks of almost one million cotton bales in the ginning factories."

http://www.brecorder.com/index.php?id=70...=&supDate=