He said the concession was the result of vigorous efforts of the Government of Pakistan. He stated this during a meeting with the members of All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) here on Thursday.
Humayun said that Pakistan informed that before January 2002, Pakistan was not part of the EU's Generalised System of Preference (GSP) scheme under which Pakistan was granted concessional rate of custom duties in EU countries.
On a point raised in the meeting, he clarified that there is no such thing that Pakistan has not agreed to some conditionalities of the EU. He, however, pledged to continue efforts for achieving GSP Plus status for Pakistan.
Aptma Chairman Ahmed Kuli Khan Khattak said that the Government of Pakistan has not done enough on gaining access to the EU's GSP Plus scheme for textile items, as the efforts made by the government so far have not yielded positive results.
He said that excluding Pakistan from GSP Plus scheme by the European Commission is unfair given the country's increasing development needs and key role in the international struggle against terrorism and extremism.
The minister was informed that good days in textile business are over. After the end of textile quotas, the prices in the international market have come down, whereas in Pakistan with the increase in export refinancing rates during the year, besides persistent rise in the raw cotton rates in the local market, the cost of production has considerably increased, making our exports costlier than competing countries like China and India.
The minister was also informed that the industry is working on negative margins and survival of value-added textile industry, in particular, is at stake due to high cost of production and exporters are relocating business to Bangladesh.
"Similarly, our garment industry lacks skilled workforce to manufacture items of international standard and there is considerable shortage of trained manpower. But the government has failed to make any viable plan to establish training institutes at appropriate places.
Ahmed Kuli Khan stressed that textile exporters are at disadvantage as compared to exports from other developing countries such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India and China.
Regarding the government's policy to export Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) entire cotton stocks and short crop in the current season, resulting in hike in the prevailing rates, the Aptma has urged the minister to review the policy on urgent basis and allow the TCP cotton for sale to local mills only.
The Aptma members informed the minister that over the last five years the spinning capacity of Pakistan has enlarged, but the government side has failed to give a clear cut policy on increasing the cotton crop to ensure availability of sufficient cotton at the local level at reasonable rates.
Humayun agreed to take the stakeholders into confidence in policy making and promised to look into the existing policy of disposal of TCP cotton.