The Pakistan Ministry of Textile Industry to introduce new legislation to undo multiple overlapping laws and ordinances. The final draft of the proposed Act is prepared in consultation with industry stakeholders would be discussion in the upcoming textile policy board meeting after submission to the Law Division for vetting soon. The new legislation aims at implementing the textile policy, strengthening the structure of textile industries and to maintain complete data on production of these units.

Federal Textile Board has been restructured and notified to facilitate the textile sector stakeholders. The platform will be used to monitor the implementation of Textile Policy (2014-19), including rationalisation of cess/surcharges applicable to the textile value chain industry and its exports, utilisation.

The Research, Development and Advisory (RDA) Cell will act as secretariat of the board and existing RDA Cell officers will be responsible for the overall implementation and monitoring of Textile Policy.

The proposed law would empower the ministry to form regulations and standards for achieving sustainable growth, increase productivity and value addition throughout the textile chain.

According to Sources, the proposed textile law would require all the functioning textile units to register themselves with the ministry as only registered textile units would get incentives announced in the textile policy. Currently, textile ministry lacks complete information about the textile units and their production data to make appropriate plans regarding the implementation of textile policy.

Presently, there is no textile export and import law in the country. In the proposed textile Act rules would be laid down and growth and activity of the industry would be monitored, sources added. The proposed law would empower the textile ministry to monitor the implementation of the textile policy and to ensure accurate statistics of production capacity, exports and total number of textile units in the country.

It will be the first-ever law pertaining to the textile industry, which will empower textile division to take final decision on every issue. Presently, the ministry has no power and cannot even issue an SRO.