KARACHI – Indonesian textile manufacturers are likely to invest in the cotton ginning sector of Pakistan while importing the ginned cotton from Islamabad, as the foreign country’s markets have a wide demand of the item.
According to sources in the embassy of Pakistan to Jakarta, in a recent development,
the Indonesian textile manufacturers have shown their interest in investing in the ginning sector and to develop a market-trade mechanism to improve the quality of ginned cotton, sources told Pakistan Today.
While improving the quality,
foreign manufacturers would also facilitate Pakistani exporters to make roads to textile markets in Jakarta, they added. According to sources the Indonesian market has also a large demand for cotton denim cloths and home textile, but exporters are yet to tap the potential markets where Pakistani cotton goods have minimum share.
As Indonesian manufacturers do not produce printed cotton (PC) cloth and the foreign country has a high demand of it, Pakistani exporters could capture the market with little strive that Islamabad has a distinctive edge in cotton based and PC cloths.
Beside textile products, sources claimed, sugar and cement were sectors where Pakistan has expertise and could develop long term interests in terms of development and technical help to Indonesian manufacturers.
According to sources, despite potential for domestic products in international markets,
Pakistan was lagging behind other competitors in Indonesian markets where Islamabad was facing high rate of trade deficit.
The trade volume between the two countries has been reduced from $1.2 billion to $0.8 billion due to the decline in the import of palm oil from Indonesia. Despite the reduced import of palm oil, the major import item from Jakarta which was facing international certification issue, the present bilateral trade status was more favoring to Indonesia.
According to a report of Federal Board of Statistic (FBS), in September, 2010 the trade volume between Pakistan and Indonesia was $ 38.085 million out of which $ 33.703 million was the imports from Jakarta while the export from Islamabad was only $ 4.382 million with the trade deficit of $ 29.321 million.
However, Pakistan’s competitors, sources said, were extremely active for the last one and half decade to take advantage of the size and growth of the large Indonesian market. China, Australia followed by India has taken a number of aggressive measures to make the place for them. The two countries, while enjoying the ethnic populations in the host country, were also having major stakes in the business sector.
Apart from textile, Pakistan’s export goods to Indonesia were mainly fish, cereals, leather, articles of rubber, plastic, copper, iron and steal, man made staple fiber etc, while its imports from Indonesia were paper, paperboard, tea, coffee, coca, soap, washing preparations, rubber, plastics, mineral oil, fuels, iron and steel etc.
