Pakistan has a plan to revive its sick textile units. Debt-restructuring facility will be offered to them. It’s estimated that if these closed units are made operational an additional one lakh workers will get jobs of which about 30,000 will be women. Pakistan hopes this will also help regain international customers who over the years have been importing from rival markets.
Moody’s International has upgraded Pakistan’s credit rating from negative to stable. It’s hoped this improvement in grading will persuade international importers to buy their products from Pakistan.
Revival of sick units is the top priority of the government in order to fully harvest the benefit of GSP Plus and to provide jobs to the unemployed. Revival of textile units in Faisalabad alone can help fetch a $1 billion in foreign exchange in addition to creating about 80,000 jobs. These units have spent billions of rupees on their infrastructure and machinery and are in a position to start operation as soon as the running finance is made available.
There is a plan to add value to Pakistani textile products. Activation of idle capacity in the value added textile sector is a major challenge for Pakistan. Right now Pakistan is only extracting about $5 dollars from one kg of cotton but the government is planning to get more than $15 dollars from a kg through value addition.
