The government is targeting to enhance value of cotton by 100 per cent from $1,000 per bale to $2,000 per bale, through value addition over the next four years, according to Ministry of Textile Industry Secretary Shahid Rasheed.
Inaugurating the first international conference on ‘Value Addition and Innovation in Textile’ - COVITEX 2011 at the National Textile University on Monday, he said the government was actively pursuing vision of an integrated value chain.
Speaking about different projects planned by the textile ministry, Rasheed said that three garment cities had been planned in Faisalabad, Lahore and Karachi to promote value addition by providing state-of-the-art infrastructural facilities to industries. He said that progress had also been made on establishing a similar mega project called Pakistan Textile City over an area of 1,250 acres in Karachi.
Rasheed said that a stitching machine operator training (SMOT) programme was being successfully run in collaboration with industrial units of Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad and Rawalpindi. “It will help overcome deficiency of skilled labour in the garment industry,” he said and added that about 8,000 operators had been trained through the programme, while the government plans to train another 500,000 workers in various skills over the next five years at a cost of Rs5 billion.
He added that the Garment Technology Training Centre (GTTC) is also being established in Karachi, in collaboration with technical and financial assistance of Korea International Cooperation Agency.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 15th, 2011.
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