ENHANCING exports has always remained a major challenge for our country because of which it continues to face the recurring balance of payment crisis. Lip service is always done to improve exports but nothing concrete is seen on the ground to achieve that goal.
Addressing a ceremony of International Textile Expo in Karachi on Friday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif stressed the country’s industrialists to come up with innovative and unique ideas to boost exports. He also assured to extend support to them to achieve the goal. Given the economic challenges faced by the country, we really need rethinking, if not resetting, in terms of adopting new export and trade strategies and ideas to earn valuable foreign exchange. Holding the textile expo which was attended by four hundred delegates from sixty countries is a step in the right direction in order to portray to the world the country’s potential in this particular sector which is in fact the backbone of the country’s economy and constitutes sixty percent of our exports. Whilst textile and other industries need to align themselves with the latest technology to produce quality products, it is also for the government to live up to its words of extending genuine help to them. At present the electricity tariff has gone beyond the reach of both domestic and industrial consumers. Hence, we will suggest that the government give special concessions to the export-oriented industries so that they can better compete in the world markets. Most recently, the textile units witnessed shut down because of restrictions on import of raw material. This has only hit our exports badly at a time when we direly needed the foreign exchange. Time has come for us to learn from our shortcomings and make improvements in areas where we are lagging. The government should encourage the domestic production of raw material. Especially for the textile sector, we will also have to significantly enhance the cotton production to give a real jump to exports. Our exports unfortunately have only seen negligible growth, particularly in comparison to countries such as Bangladesh and Vietnam that have achieved exceptional growth over the past decade. We need to create such an environment where investment pours in and our productive sectors, especially industries, IT and agriculture thrive if we really want to come out of the current debt trap.
