ISLAMABAD: A list of 15 home textile and garment items has been finalised which will be provided to the European Union (EU) requesting for inclusion in the list of 75 items given duty concession.

"The Textile Ministry has prepared a list of 15 items which, if included in the duty free tariff list proposed by the EU, would increase exports to one billion euros, whereas the current concessionary list would fetch an additional amount of 100 million euros only as the 75 items included in the proposed list account for less than one-third of Pakistan's exports," said Minister for Textile Industry, Farooq Saeed Khan.

This was stated in a meeting presided over by Textile Minister regarding preferential EU market access in case of certain textile products. The Minister said that soon a letter would be written to the Foreign Minister, requesting him to forward this proposal to the EU for consideration through diplomatic channels.

Farooq termed the trade concession as a historic breakthrough in trade diplomacy. However, he added that the overall impact of the proposed duty concessions would not be of much benefit to the value-added textile sector as the thrust of the concessions is mainly on low value products like gloves, mittens, socks, etc, whereas key products like bed-linen, garments, etc, were left out.

The Minister emphasised that the concessions should be liberal and it should include the value-added textile products if EU intends to help Pakistan economy in moving upwards in the wake of the recent devastating floods. Later, the Ministry forwarded the above mentioned proposals to the Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who is in Brussels at the moment for the upcoming Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FODP) meeting.

The meeting was attended by heads and representatives from various trade associations like Diamond Industries, Sadaqat Textiles, Soorti Textiles, Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers association, Amtex Textiles, Dawn Garments and Pakistan Apparel Forum.

Representatives of value-added textile sector expressed concern over the duty concession offered by EU to Pakistan. They said that the overall impact of the concessions would not be of much benefit to the value-added textile sector, as export of raw material would increase cost of doing business due to shortage of raw material in the local market.