Statistics shows that the county's textile exports have posted a growth of 10 percent during the last fiscal year against the target of 20 percent growth, while its share in overall exports has also raised by four percent to 59 percent.
"The central bank's statistics are reliable and on their basis that the country has missed its textile export target," said Federal Minister for Textile Mushtaq Ali Cheema.
He said that the Federal Bureau of Statistics would release statistics soon, but "we are sure that the country's textile export target has missed somewhere between 10 percent and 14 percent.
"Although the central bank statistics show that textile exports have increased by 10 percent, but still it is lower than the growth target of 20 percent set by the Federal government for the last fiscal year," he added.
He said that despite the difficulties and hurdles, it was a big achievement and it was expected that during the current fiscal year, the export target would be achieved.
Statistics released by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) show the country's textile export have touched new peak of 10.012 billion dollars during the 2006-07 fiscal year as compared to 9.141 billion dollars during the 2005-06 fiscal, witnessing an increase of 870 million dollars during 2007 fiscal year.
Another positive sign witnessed during the last fiscal was that the textile export's share in the overall country's exports also surged by five percent to around 59 percent, which earlier stood at 55 percent for the last few years.
Statistics indicate that the country's overall exports claimed to have reached 17 billion dollars during 2007 fiscal, out of which textile exports' share have was 10.012 billion dollars against 9.141 billion dollars, out of 16.387 billion dollars during the 2006 fiscal.
Earlier the exporters were expecting that the textile sector would not perform well and the export of the textile sector could be lower than the 2006 fiscal, as they believed that the textile sector was in a serious crisis due to high cost of doing business and healthy competition in the regional countries, including India, China and Bangladesh.
Therefore, the textile sector continued its demand, and demanded further subsidies and rebates on textile exports. Exporters' point of view was that the country's textile industry was in serious crisis and they needed cut in the cost of production to make the country's textile export competitive in the international market.
However, the government believed that textile sector already had got robust facilities and other benefits in shape of research and development. Statistics show that out of 12, only three textile products, including raw cotton, tents and cotton carded exports have declined during the 2007 fiscal, while exports of other products, including readymade garments, synthetic textile, yarn, knitwear, bedwear, artsilk and synthetic witnessed a raise.
Raw cotton exports have declined by 24.032 million dollars to 75.640 million dollars, cotton-carded exports showed a decline of 8.856 million dollars to 275.972 million dollars and tent and canvas by 0.557 million dollars to 72.764 million dollars during 2007 fiscal.
However, cotton yarn exports have witnesses growth of 181 million dollars to 1.075 billion dollars, cotton cloth exports have raised by 59.545 million dollars to 2.318 billion dollars, yarn other than cotton yarn 30 million dollars to 141.307 million dollars, knitwear 187.58 million dollars to 2.105 billion dollars.
Similarly, exports of bedwear have increased by 80.816 million dollars to 1.394 billion dollars, towels export grew by 45.55 million dollars to 166.268 million dollars, readymade garments by 133 million dollars to 1.096 billion dollars.
In addition, made-up article exports witnessed an increase of 33.106 million dollars to 346.795 million dollars and exports of artsilk and synthetic textile reached 386.292 million dollars with 104 million-dollar upsurge, whereas exports of other textile sectors registered 21 percent growth.
Exporters said major reason behind the failure in achievement of the textile export target was uncompetitiveness in the region and despite the several demands, the government was not providing concessions and facilities in the utilities sector. "We are leaving in the 21st century, but still the industries have failed to get electricity and water as per demand," they added.
Textile industry is one of the major industries of the country, which contributes major share of 65 percent in the country's industry and has a share of 40 percent in the industrial jobs.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2007