ISLAMABAD – Pakistan will address India’s quantity restriction on cotton exports and will urge them to reciprocate their contractual sanctity as already shown by Pakistan on the onion exports issue.
According to official sources, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi provided this assurance to a delegation of All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA), led by Textile Minister Rana Farooq Saeed Khan, here on Friday. The minister said that the issue would be taken up with the higher authorities.
Following the country’s devastating floods, cotton production has dwindled by 20 percent to 11 million bales. Pakistani textile exports have placed import orders worth 1.2 million bales from India last year but the Indian government imposed quantative restrictions, which halted the imports process.
A World Bank study estimates that the initiation of regional trade will lead to a two percent increase in GDP of all South Asian states. In another development, APTMA and polyester fibre industry have agreed to form a committee under the chairmanship of minister for textiles to resolve the six percent import duty on the polyester fibre. APTMA is demanding scrapping of the duty as it was hurting the millers, while local polyester fibre industry is of the opinion that it protects the domestic industry.
