20000309

High prices, late

deliveries driving

European garment

buyers away

RECORDER REPORT

KARACHI: Pakistani textile exporters are rapidly losing the export market in Europe because of a higher prices and delayed deliveries of consignments, say garment exporters.

Bilal Mulla, the Chairman of the Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PRGMEA) South Zone, who recently returned from a tour of Europe, said that the main complaint of the European buyers against exports from Pakistan was late deliveries of consignments.

He said that another reason given by the buyers was that Pakistani textile products were atleast 15 to 20 percent costlier than the same items exported by Bangladesh, although quality of the products was the same.

Mulla said that the late deliveries of export goods from Pakistan were the result of frequent power breakdowns in factories and political strikes. These factors delayed manufacturing of export goods, causing cancellation of export orders or penalty by the buyers.

He pointed out that abnormal increase in yarn prices had led to an escalated cost of value-added products making them uncompetitive in the world market. Pakistani exporters are fast losing the market, which they had captured last year, to Bangladesh which is offering cheaper garments to Europe.

Bilal urged the government to take urgent steps to get the prices of yarn down to a reasonable level so that value added exporters could get raw material to manufacture exports products. The first and foremost action for the government should be to ban export of yarn or impose 10 percent duty on exports. Only this, he feels would release pressure on the prices of yarn in the local market.

He said that since the government was encouraging export of yarn by offering export re-finance, the price of yarn had gone up to an unprecedented high.