PRINCIPLE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES OF PAKISTAN

The industrial sector had a negligible base at the time of partition in 1947. The infrastructure facilities were inadequate. In the past over five decades. The government has overcome the initial difficulties in the way of industrialization. The country has undergone a structural change from a purely agrarian economy to a semi industrial one. Pakistan is now almost self sufficient in most of the consumer goods industries. The work on developing heavy industries like iron and steel, shipbuilding, fertilizers, chemicals etc, is fairly in advance stage. The progress of industrial sector is briefly reviewed as under.

(I)   Textile industry.    The share of textile industry in the economy along with its contribution in exports, employments, foreign, exchange earnings, investments and value added makes it the single largest manufacturing sector of Pakistan. The textile production consists of production of cotton, ginning, spinning, weaving, dying printing and finally garments manufacturing. It contributes 54% of total exports earning. The textile and clothing industry accounts for 45% or total manufacturing and 38 percent of the total manufacturing labour force employment.

(II)             Sugarindustry.  There are 77 sugar mills working in the country of which 38 are in the Punjab. 32 in sindh and 6 in NWFP and 1 in AJK. These have an installed capacity of 5.5 million tonnes of sugar production. The industry is confronted with inefficiency in production which is partly contributed by the quality and quantity of sugarcane availability. The production of sugar was 3.892 million tones during 2010-11 which increased to 4.486 million tones in 2011-12.

(III)          Chemical industry. There was hardly any chemical industry in Pakistan in 1947. Pakistan by the grace of God, has now 12 chemical projects. Due to increase in the demand of chemicals and related products. The shortage in chemical can be met by (1) installing new industries (2) adopting new scientific methods to the production of chemicals (3) exploring new products (4) rationalizing price policy on fertilizers.

(IV)           Fertilizers. Fertilizers play an important role in increasing agricultural production. During 2011-12 two new urea fertilizer plants were operationalised. As a result installed fertilizer production capacity was increased by 1.8 million tons to 6.3 million tons per annum. With this capacity the country was expected to achieve self sufficiency but this not materialize due to shortage of gas. As a result the country has to import 1.6 million tons of urea leaking to a subsidy cost of RS.45 billion due to higher prices of the imported fertilizer.

(V)              Cementindustry.  The installed capacity is in 2011-12 is 44 million tons per annum. The cement industry is based on local raw material. However, there is a rising trend in the demand and price of cement for the last few years. The main factor which have brought and upswing in the cement production is the rise in construction activity by the people, increased development expenditure by the government and export of cement to Afghanistan and other countries. Production was 20.277 in 2008-09 compared with 19.364 million tons in 2007-08, 21.410 million tons in 2011-12.