Pak embassies scaring away foreign buyers

‘Visiting Pakistan is a life risk’ is the verbal warning issued to visa seekers by some officials of various Pak embassies: PCMEA chairman

Wednesday, November 25, 2009
By Mansoor Ahmad

LAHORE: Some officials of the Pakistan embassies abroad are verbally warning foreign buyers seeking visas to visit Pakistan that they are doing so at their own risk, Pakistan Carpet Manufacturers and Exporters Association Chairman Pervaiz Hanif said.

The PCMEA Chairman Pervaiz Hanif said “our members have reported that though many Pakistani embassies do issue visa to prospective carpet buyers, they verbally warn them that visiting Pakistan is a life risk.”

In this regard, Hanif said, buyers from Spain, Italy and Turkey quoted warning of Pakistani embassies while refusing to visit Pakistan.

The travel advisory issued by developed countries has already hit severely hand knotted carpet exports while warnings from Pak embassies has served severe blow to the trade.

The PCMEA Chairman Pervaiz Hanif said this while giving a briefing to members of Lahore Economic Journalists Association on the state of carpet industry.

“Hand knotted carpet is a unique product for which the buyers place order after thoroughly inspecting it,” he said.

Carpet exports suffered first after 9/11 as foreigners stopped visiting Pakistan, he said, adding their confidence was restored after hectic efforts of carpet exporters.

He said the second setback to carpet exports came after proclamation of emergency by former president Pervez Musharraf in 2007. In that case, most of the buyers stopped arriving in Pakistan and exports almost halved from $300 million to $145 million in 2008-09.

Hanif said the exporters again convinced the buyers that things were almost normal in Pakistan and there was no danger for them at least in big cities like Karachi and Lahore.

However, PCMEA members have reported that some officials of Pakistani embassies verbally warn the visa seekers that visiting Pakistan is a life risk.

The PCMEA chairman said that carpet was a cottage industry that required no infrastructure. He said carpets were weaved on handlooms mostly by women in their homes. Carpet weaving provides employment to 1.5 million workers. It is a labour-intensive industry where the labour accounts for 70 per cent of input cost while raw material accounts for 30 per cent of production cost.

He said another aspect worth noting was that carpet weaving was done in the poverty-stricken regions of the country. In the early seventies, it was concentrated in poor regions of central Punjab like Daska and Sangla Hill.

However, he said as the affluence increased in the region carpet weaving shifted to south Punjab in areas like Vehari, DG Khan and Ghakkar.

Another aspect in this trade is that 70 per cent of the workforce is women who operate looms at their home and supplement the income of the male family members.

He said this industry developed without any government support though by its nature it should have been the top priority of every government. He said that major hand knotted carpet exporting countries had shifted their carpet production to factories while it was still a cottage industry in Pakistan.

He said India has emerged as the largest exporter of hand knotted carpets in the world with yearly export of $1.2 billion. However he added that the Indians export low value added carpets. He said Pakistan could increase its exports four times from current $145 million to $600 million if the government facilitates the exporters.

He said the carpet exporters are receiving delayed payments of their consignments due to global recession. They are thus not in a position to fulfil the State Bank’s condition of turning over two times the low interest export refinance provided to them.

He said in view of exceptional conditions the SBP should waive this condition as it did last year. He said that the central bank has also reduced the amount of export refinance from 100 per cent to 75 per cent. This has created liquidity crunch for the exporters he added.

He said TDAP should also be asked to adopt a proactive approach in facilitating participation of carpet exporters in international fairs.

He said the government should also arrange establishment of programmed carpet weaving centres to ensure large scale manufacturing of same designs for big stores in Europe and the USA.