After almost thirty years of being governed by the Multi-Fibre Agreement (MFA), garment trade was opened up to free competition in 2005. Since then, the global garment industry has come a long way both in terms of product development and innovation.
An important ingredient that made some developing countries more successful in becoming choice garment suppliers for developed regions such as the EU and North America was the ability to develop the requisite skill-set.
Countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Sri Lanka were able to train their workers effectively to keep in step with modern technologies while Pakistan and India have lagged behind when it came to keeping up with the high streets of fashion.
This column has already lamented the dearth of quality and modern fabric in Pakistan and will now look to focus on the second major impediment to garments growth in the industry. (Read: “Textile: Evolving consumer preferences” published 17 Oct, 2017). From an economic standpoint, the benefit of trained workers is obvious.
An improved skill-set allows for higher value-added products to be made resulting in greater productivity which in turn provides better employment and higher wages for garment workers. However, for Pakistan training institutes are few in number and mostly out of touch with modern practices.
For example the average Vietnamese garment factory revenue-to-cost ratio grew by roughly 25 after the Better Work Vietnam program. The aim was to train Vietnamese garment workers and promote competitiveness in the country’s apparel market through skill development.
Most large units have got in-house training departments but SMEs have got little support especially from the government when it comes to skill development. The majority of factories lack separate training budgets and properly defined training programs are absent.
In a recently held policy talk at the Consortium of Development Policy Research (CDPR), Sajid Saleem, CEO of Delta Garments Limited, stressed the need for developing policies to align manufacturing capabilities with global textile demand. The need of the hour is to enhance the capabilities of existing textile training institutes while creating new ones.
While the Chinese have shown interest in setting up higher value added ready garment setups for manufacturing products such as English suits and quality shirts, they have been stumped when trying to find domestic labour for them.
When it comes to skill-development in the garments sector, there have been initiatives by the troika of government, private sector and donor agencies. Yet, most have failed to create meaningful impact. In the coming days, this column will identify the gaps where work needs to be done and global best practices that need to be adopted in order to keep up with evolving global consumer preferences.
