Pakistan envisions doubling value of cotton

Inaugurating the first international conference on Value Addition and Innovation in Textile, ‘COVITEX 2011’ on Monday, Pakistan’s Secretary of Textile Ministry, Mr Shahid Rasheed announced additional direct financial support to the textile sector. He told that, the Government disbursed Rs 9.75 billion in fiscal 2009-10 and had allocated Rs 7.5 billion for the current fiscal year.
The government aims for high value exports through a well-planned industrial structure, product diversification and institutional framework. The Government has set a target to enhance value of cotton produced by it by 100 percent from $1000 per bale to $2000 per bale in next four years. To achieve this target, many measures for value addition have been implemented.
Under this program, three garment cities will be established at Faisalabad, Lahore and Karachi to promote value addition. All these garment cities will provide state-of-the-art infrastructural facilities to the industry. The work for similar mega project, called Pakistan Textile City, spread in 1250 acres at Karachi near Port Qasim is under progress.
For skills development, the Government runs a Stitching Machine Operator Training (SMOT) program in collaboration with industrial units at Faisalabad, Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore. Under this program, more than 8,000 operators have been trained.
Considering the shortage of skilled persons, more than 500,000 workers will be trained in various skills over the next 5 years. For this program, Rs.5 billion will be spent.
The Government will establish the Garment Technology Training Center (GTTC) at Karachi with technical and financial support from Korea International Cooperation Agency for skill development. This centre is expected to become operational in September 2011 and will provide modern and cutting edge facilities to the garment sector.

(Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/textile-news/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=96769)