Some Comments on the Cotton Cloth Consumption in Pakistan

From the beginning, the cotton textile industry has been thekeystone of Pakis¬tan's industrial development. In both the large scale(more than 1U employees) and the small scale sectors, cotton textiles isthe single most important industry in terms of both the value of outputand employment. Cotton textiles account for more than 15 percent of allexports and a much higher share of manufactured exports. While theimportance of textiles has diminished with the spread ofin¬dustrialization to other sectors, the predominance of textiles inmanufacturing employment, value added and exports is likely to continuefor some time. As Pakistan prepares to launch its Fifth Five-Year plan,it is useful to examine the growth prospects for the cotton textileindustry. Having long ago replaced imports of cotton textiles bydomestic production, Pakistan must now look to the expansion of foreignmarket for textiles or at least Pakistan's share in the market-and tothe growth of the home market to absorb any planned growth in productivecapacity. With the uncertainties in the world market, and especially thecurrent recessionary slump in the developed economies the aftermath ofwhich is likely to be felt for some time, especially in the form of newquantitative restrictions against textile and other manufactured importscoming from developing countries -the future growth in demand forPakistan's exports is very problematic. Over the decade of the 1960's,textile exports grew in real terms by more than 20 percent per annum.From 1970 to 1974 the trend rate fell to less than 5 percent per annumwith considerable fluctuations in the rate of increase from year toyear. Of course, there always remains the possibility that Pakistan canexpand her share of the foreign market sufficiently to offset anydecline in world demand, but the existence of the country-specificquotas on textile products in many of the importing coun¬tries may provea serious constraint in this regard.