On April 23, 2024 the Russian Association of Fashion Industry (RAFI) and the Business Association for Cooperation with Pakistan (BACP) has signed a cooperation agreement which cover a wide range of areas that are of potential interest to Russian clothing manufacturers, retailers and fashion brands.
The document was signed by the presidents of the organizations: Tatiana Belkevich – on the part of RAFI and Jawad Rehman – on the part of BACP. The parties agreed to join forces on developing and implementing projects in the field of international trade and economic relations between entrepreneurs from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and companies working in fashion and textile industry in the Russian Federation.
The joint activities will be devoted to organization of bilateral trade and economic missions, business meetings, industry-oriented exhibitions and other events aimed to establish B2B-cooperation. In addition, RAFI and BACP plan to search and select business partners for Pakistani and Russian companies, take marketing research and provide consulting on elevating effectiveness of both countries’ entrepreneurship.
The textile industry is the largest sector of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan economy. It plays an important role in the country’s export and contributes about 8.5% to the state’s GDP. The large volume of textile and garment production has allowed Pakistan to become one of the leading manufacturers and exporters of textile goods in the world – the country is the 8th largest exporter of textile products among Asian countries.
Pakistan is also the 4th largest cotton producer with the 3rd largest spinning capacity in Asia (after China and India). Nearly all synthetic and natural yarns and fabrics are produced by the country’s factories, which gives a significant advantage to Pakistani enterprises and influences beneficially the cost and time of production.
The textile and garment industry of Pakistan employs over 4.2 mln workers. The significant part of them (2.2 mln people) is engaged in ready-to-wear clothes manufacturing, 1.8 mln people produce textile goods, and about 200,000 people specialize in shoe and leather production.
Among the first steps towards the implementation of the outlined by RAFI and BACP initiatives will be the arrangement of Pakistani factories booths at the BEE-TOGETHER.ru exhibition. It is organized by RAFI and focused on clothes and accessories outsourcing manufacturing.
The next 17th season of the exhibition will take place on June 4-7, 2024 in an expanded 2-streams format with 2 days dedicated to only foreign exhibitors. As preliminary estimated, this year there will be 2 times more participants at the event. All of them will be representing factories with extra capacities ready to process orders on contract production.
Since 2016 RAFI has established partnerships with such professional associations and organizations as iHKiB and iTKiB (Turkey), CEPEX and CETTEX (Tunisia), Expolink (Egypt), Yabaolu (China), UNIDO (UN), Uztextileprom (Uzbekistan), BGMEA (Bangladesh), FIEO (India), Association of Entrepreneurs “Eurasian Business Club”. Cooperation with BACP will lead to more intensive development of the bilateral potential between Russia and Pakistan in the textile and apparel sector.
Source: Russian Association of Fashion Industry (RAFI)