By: Mawaiz Khan Akash
Ishtiaq Baig is Vice Chairman Baig Group Companies a multinational conglomerate engaged in diversified industrial and commercial activities operating in Pakistan, U.A.E. and Morocco. The group has workforce of over 1500 dedicated employees. He did his masters in Business Administration. This businessman par-excellence represents a rich background of international exposure to the realms of Finance and Marketing. A well Traveled Diplomat, and a high profile industrialist, accompanied President and Prime Minister of Pakistan on their various foreign overseas visits as part of their entourage. In recognition of his intrinsic worth, he was a conferred prestigious award by no less than the President and the Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Business Monitor reporting staff talks to Ishtiaq Baig to discover challenges being confronted by the textile sector and the potential of growth in textile exports and its value addition.

While throwing light on the performance of textile sector he highlighted that Pakistan's performance in textile sector, especially in value-added products has been the worst in the region despite having competitive advantage as apparel exports from china, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka remained higher than Pakistan though the last two countries do not have basis textiles nor they produce cotton. T could be said that Pakistan is serving other nations to earn more foreign exchange from export of value-added products. Despite having state of art apparel machines, experts pointed out to be better than India, which is fast catching up its own cotton and basic textile units and lowest wages, the apparel exporters are most worried about china factor.

The country has become a semi-finished raw material source for those nations involved in value additions and apparel production. The government should take steps to ensure Pakistani exporters stay competitive in quota - free market. The industry is over burdened with numerous taxes and duties and huge funds were blocked as over due sales tax refunds. The Bangladesh government had removed value - added tax from all industries that export their entire product. Besides that , there was a large number of governments agencies that collect " legal and illegal" charges from the export industries, resulting in higher cost of production.

He expressed his views regarding budget that before the announcement of budget we gave a number of proposals because textile sector is the largest sector than other sectors. Somehow in the international market, our prices are becoming higher, the reason is not because of the raw material is expensive but our cost of doing business has increased many folds. Every three months there is an increase in local utility prices, the interest rate has gone up also. We've asked the government that the utility price be the same at par, only then can we compete at the global level. He said that this budget is based on a common man, but it does not talk about the textile industry.

In reply to a question regarding textile he said that textile sector is providing about 30 percent of the entire employment all over Pakistan. This sector earns $10 billion foreign exchange. If only we reduce the cost of doing business here in Pakistan, we can definitely be able to grow our export. We essentially need to do just two things, the government's incentive must be on two things; firstly that we will not export the raw material; secondly the government needs to reduce the cost of input.

He anticipated that textile industry is the backbone of Pakistan; we are hopeful that in the next ten years Pakistan will progress. Last year, textile growth was around 16 percent, but unfortunately our textile growth this year reduced. This year it stands not even at 9 percent. This is a sad thing. Cost of doing business, is not under our control.  mawaiz.khan@businessmonitorpk.com