New textile policy to be ready in few days: Abbas

Federal Minister for Textile and Industries Abbas Khan Afridi on Tuesday said that draft of the new textile policy (2014-19) would be ready in a few days and then forwarded to the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet next week for approval.

"The textile sector alone has the potential to steer the country out of its financial crisis and "we have started focusing on exporting value-added products instead of raw materials to achieve this objective," said Abbas Khan Afridi in an exclusive interview with APP.

He stressed the need for formulating a comprehensive and long-term policy, and said both the government and industry were committed to fully exploiting the potential of all related sectors of textile. Federal Minister for Textile Industry Abbas Khan Afridi further said that the government was giving top priority to the value-added textile sector to provide jobs opportunities to people and increasing textile exports by $2 billion per annum under the new proposed textile policy (2014-19).

Afridi said the government was aware that value-added textile sector was facing immense problems and hurdles, which needs to be removed for enhancing exports in the best interest of the nation.

The Minister said that after the availability of GSP- Plus exports of our valueadded sector has increased by 21 percent to European Union.

The Minister said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and cabinet took a bold step to ensuring 12 hours gas supply to the textile sector in winter and 24 hours uninterrupted power supply besides reduction in power tariff. The Minister said the valueadded textile sector can play a vital role in creation of new employment opportunities therefore the government was making allout efforts to remove the hurdles in the growth of this sector, besides providing all necessary facilities to textile sector.