The Pakistan government has allowed the import of most of the textile machinery from India under a recently extended positive list of importable items. A notification to this effect has been issued by the Commerce Ministry, which has been welcomed and termed “long overdue” to quote President of Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry Majyed Aziz.

The decision comes in the wake of falling imports of textile machinery during last few months and leaders of trade and industry now expect that Pakistan’s textile industry is bound to get a boost.

According to the textile industry leaders Pakistan imports textile machinery from USA, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and other Western Countries, which are costlier because of high cost of capital goods, freight and above all the consultants’ fee charged to install this machinery and equipment in Pakistan.

Mirza Ikhtiar Baig, a Former Chairman of Site Association of Industry (SAI), said that most of the companies of Western countries, that supply textile machinery to Pakistan, have joint venture projects in India or have given franchise rights and licences to Indian companies.

With this time has come for an unbiased re-thinking on the part of Pakistan on the issue of granting of MFN status to India in order to allow better access of the two countries markets to each other’s products. Giving MFN status to the member countries is a basic requirement under the WTO and no country can get away with that indefinitely. Sooner or later, therefore, voluntarily or by compulsion, Pakistan will have to grant MFN status to India.

We believe the sooner Pakistan grants MFN status to India the better it will be for both of these two countries, besides the other countries of south India.

Textile industry in Pakistan will be the biggest beneficiary as it will enjoy the advantage of importing cheaper textile machinery from India.

Pakistani products will also have access to the second largest and potentially the largest market in the world. In case Pakistani producers increase the competitiveness of their products, the potentially larger demand may also help realize the economics of scale which will make our products more prices competitive.