PAKISTAN'S TEXTILES INDUSTRY IS FRAYING AT THE EDGES

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 LAHORE 000207 SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ECON BEXP BTIO EAGR EAID ECIN EIND ELAB ETRD PGOV, PREL, PK SUBJECT: PAKISTAN'S TEXTILES INDUSTRY IS FRAYING AT THE EDGES REF: A. A. LAHORE 0014 ¶B. B. ISLAMABAD 1901 ¶C. C. ISLAMABAD 0229 ¶D. D. 08 LAHORE 0291 ¶E. E. 08 ISLAMABAD 2633 ¶1. (SBU) Summary: Garments and textiles constitute the single largest industrial sector in Pakistan, accounting for 40 percent of all industrial employment and 8.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). While the industry has several globally competitive firms, the bulk of the business is mired in low-value added market segments and hampered by fragmentation and fragile infrastructure. Decades of policy supported the industry as an engine of job growth, but demand for labor is intertwined with the sector's underlying weaknesses. Moreover, the nation has become dangerously dependent on garment and textile work. Structural change to make the industry more competitive could idle tens of thousands of workers who currently have few alternative employment options. Perpetuating the status quo is also problematic, trapping the nation in a cycle of unsustainable subsidies for low-value-added, uncompetitive industry. The federal textile policy announced August 13 acknowledged these problems but probably cannot fix them. End Summary. - - - FABRIC OF PAKISTAN'S INDUSTRIAL ECONOMY - - - ¶2. (U) The textile and garment industry is vital to Pakistan's economy. According to government data, the sector represents 8.5 percent of GDP and generates roughly 50 percent of total export value (down from over 58 percent last year). The Ministry of Textiles claims that the industry accounts for 40 percent of industrial employment in the country, and provides supplemental income to "more than ten million farming families." (Note: Pakistan's Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) puts the entire agriculture labor force at approximately 21.9 million on 6.7 million farms. Post previously estimated the number of people engaged in textile-related labor to be roughly three million, two-thirds of them in Punjab. (ref A) All Pakistan Textile Mills Association leaders more recently put textile employment at 2.5 to 2.6 million. End Note.) ¶3. (U) The top tier of Pakistan's textile and garment sector has globally competitive businesses, such as Rupali Polyester, which focus on high-tech synthetic fibers, and vertical integrators like ChenOne Stores who do their own weaving, printing and dyeing, knitting, design, production, and retailing. These better firms are characterized by professional management, global marketing capabilities, formal sector jobs, and larger scale high-tech facilities that operate on self-generated electricity supplies. Top textile unit owners and their bankers report that this elite segment of the industry is faring reasonably well, and their orders have been increasing. - - - FRAYING AT THE EDGES: LOW VALUE-ADDITION AND UNCOMPETITIVE FIRMS - - - ¶4. (SBU) The very structure of the lower tier, on the other hand, renders the industry vulnerable even when order books are full. Much of Pakistan's textile sector is focused on low-cost market segments such as yarn, basic clothing made from low grade cotton, and cotton bed, bath, and table linens. Secretary for Textiles Waqar Khan recently told Econoffs that Pakistan's textile and garment industry averaged $1,000 of value addition per bale of cotton, compared to $2,000 for India and $4,000 for China. Pakistan's textile and garment sector is the third largest consumer of raw cotton in the world, yet the country ranks just twelfth in the value of its international textile and garment trade. A recent USAID consultant's report found that Pakistan's low-cost domestic cotton and inexpensive labor enabled it to compete in lower value sectors. An Asian Development Bank (ADB) analysis conducted in 2004 reached the same conclusion, judging this characteristic of Pakistan's textile sector "unfortunate," given global market trends and increasing competition, especially from Pakistan's Asian LAHORE 00000207 002 OF 003 neighbors. Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin observed that Pakistan's textile industry was competing on price, and it would eventually lose. ¶5. (SBU) Marginal small and medium-sized enterprises comprise much of this lower tier, facing a lack of access to or misuse of capital and dependence on informal labor and feeble power and transportation systems. A 2007 government of Pakistan report found that more than 98 percent of the country's 305,000 garment sector sewing machines and 87 percent of Pakistan's 259,000 looms were in cottage or small-scale production units. Only the spinning segment is consolidated in large-scale manufacturing enterprises. In both private and public settings, Finance Minister Tarin has lamented the industry's fragmentation and resulting lack of transparency and competitiveness. Informal employment is common in all non-farm industries in Pakistan, averaging 73 percent according to the FBS. Family control of textile firms often leads to weak professional management and murky corporate governance, say industry observers. Piece-workers are typically organized into loose labor organizations headed by brokers whose compensation is linked more to the number of jobs they manage than the productivity of the labor. Workers in all subsectors have resisted technology upgrades that would lead to job losses. - - - WRAPPED IN GOVERNMENT SUPPORTS - - - ¶6. (SBU) As Anjum Ahmad, private sector development expert at the World Bank put it, Pakistan's textile and garment industry has "always lived on subsidies. Always." The sector represents 8.5 percent of GDP, but Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR) data show that it contributed less than one percent of combined gross sales, customs, and excise tax payments to the government in fiscal year (FY) 2007-2008. The sector's net tax contribution is even lower, as it receives tax refunds for "duty drawbacks" on imported content, such as high quality cotton, that is re-exported in finished goods. In FY 2004-2005, the last year before Pakistan implemented a zero duty rating scheme for part of the industry, garment and textile units collected $438 million in tax rebates, 79 percent of the national total. Previous governments have subsidized the sector's research and development, offered low cost financing for both and capital improvements and regular operations, restructured or forgiven industry bank debt, and provided labor force training. - - - NO ALTERNATIVE TO TEXTILES TO CUSHION THE ECONOMY - - - ¶7. (U) Perhaps the largest problem with the textile sector is the lack of existing alternatives, a point the Ministry of Commerce makes frequently and which the recently-adopted trade policy seeks to address (ref B). Harvard Economist Ricardo Hausmann explained in a recent (still unpublished) ADB report that between 1975 and 2000, Pakistan did not make any significant leaps into new industrial export sectors. As a result, Pakistan is dangerously dependent on garments and textiles, where China, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Hong Kong and others all have comparative advantages over Pakistan ranging from cheaper labor and broader market access, to more modern equipment, better management, and superior quality control. An earlier ADB analysis noted that Pakistan would have to take serious steps in order to significant expand its share of a declining and fiercely competitive market for cheap fabrics and finished products. The industry must change to remain competitive, and will probably shrink as a result. The fear is that restructuring could idle hundreds of thousands of workers with few other job prospects. ¶8. (U) Farm households and female labor are particularly vulnerable in the event of structural changes in textiles and garments. Decades of industrial development policy focused on the textile sector, in part because it was labor-intensive, and because some activities in the value chain such as stitching could be done by laborers working at home. For most women in LAHORE 00000207 003 OF 003 conservative rural areas, cottage industry is one of the very few socially acceptable employment options, and garment work became a mainstay of diversifying farm household incomes. (Note: FBS estimates the female labor force participation rate in Pakistan as a whole to be just 26.3 percent, roughly half the rate for men, and most of that is in farm or home-service labor. End Note.) - - - COMMENT: OPPORTUNITY IN TEXTILE AND GARMENTS INDUSTRY IS WEARING THIN - - - ¶9. (SBU) Comment: While the upper echelon of Pakistan's textile industry has a bright future, the lower layers need systemic reforms to remain globally competitive. Pakistan's advantages in cheap labor and cotton should not remain crutches to prop up structural weaknesses. Cotton is cheap because it is of low quality, and labor is cheap because of the absence of other industrial employment, particularly for women. The government cannot afford ever more subsidies to support this large but increasingly dysfunctional part of the economy. The Textile Minister understands the structural weaknesses of the sector and outlined many of them when introducing the new national textile policy. Septel will assess the potential for Pakistan's textile policy to achieve meaningful change. ¶10. (U) Note: This cable is a joint production of Embassy Islamabad and Consulate General Lahore. End Note. CONROY