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Meeting tomorrow to initiate textile plan preparations

LAHORE: Federal Commerce Minister Abdul Razak Dawood on Sunday said that the first meeting to initiate preparation of a five-year textile plan would be held in Islamabad on January 4 (Tuesday).

The plan will seek to pre-empt the problems Pakistani exports are likely to confront after January 1, 2005, when under World Trade Organisation (WTO) Treaty, all quotas for the exports of textiles and its made-ups will cease.

"The plan to be announced within a couple of months will be formulated after active consultations with all the stake holders including growers, ginners, spinners, weavers, textile millers and the exporters," Dawood told a press conference at the Export Promotion Bureau office here.

Referring to his talks with the textile retailers at the recently concluded Seattle WTO meeting, Dawood said that these Western importers believed that the bargaining power would mostly lie with them in the post-quota era, leading to the decrease in the prices of textile goods.

Talking about the things to be emphasised in the upcoming 5 year textile plan, he said that emphasis on value addition and getting rid of quota brokers would be few of the salient features of the policy.