Pakistan’s Textile Export Competitiveness Hinges on Shared Sustainability Burden

LAHORE: Pakistan’s textile export competitiveness require a fair distribution of the financial and operational burden of sustainability among global retail brands, local manufacturers and governments, participants of a stakeholder conference said.
The views were expressed by Industry representatives, policymakers, regulators, researchers, law and energy sector experts at the national sectoral dialogue titled “Currents of Changes: Textile Compliance, Shared Responsibility, and Pakistan’s Power Market Transition,” organised by Alternate Development Services (ADS).
National Grid Company Chairman Dr Fiaz Chaudhary said power-sector reforms had often been introduced without addressing the underlying causes of structural problems, resulting in further complications. He provided a historical overview of power-sector reforms dating back to the 1980s and 1990s, tracing the institutional evolution from WAPDA’s unbundling to the creation of NTDC, its subsequent transformation into NGC, and the emergence of ISMO.
He identified recurring policy mistakes, particularly the unbundling or dissolution of institutions without establishing effective functional replacements. He said the abandonment of meritocracy and the appointment of inexperienced individuals with limited understanding of the energy sector to critical decision-making positions had been a major underlying cause of reform failures.
He said around 70 per cent of power distribution companies were already performing according to international standards, while governance issues existed in the remaining 30 per cent. Therefore, instead of privatising all DISCOs, their problems should be assessed individually and addressed accordingly.
He also identified the widening gap between electricity demand in summer and winter, as well as increasingly between daytime and nighttime demand, as a major challenge, saying solarisation had further altered consumption patterns.
He said the unbundling of WAPDA had weakened an otherwise strong institution and contributed to a halt in growth in power generation, while the IPP model introduced to bridge the resulting gap had subsequently created significant challenges for Pakistan.
However, he said the power sector was now moving in the right direction and commended ISMO’s ongoing efforts to implement CTBCM. The Competitive Trading Bilateral Contract Market (CTBCM), he said, represented an important structural reform that could help Pakistan transition from a state-controlled “single buyer model” towards an open and competitive wholesale electricity market.
ADS CEO Amjad Nazeer said the conference aimed to promote constructive dialogue on sustainability and competitiveness in Pakistan’s textile and apparel industry and develop practical solutions to challenges involving compliance, decarbonisation, financing, buyer expectations, technology adoption and workforce capacity.
He said that ADS’ initiative called Shared Transition Responsibility Movement (STRM) was being introduced as a shared-responsibility mechanism, while industry input was being sought for its design and rollout. He added that the initiative also sought to develop a practical understanding of CTBCM among industrial stakeholders, including its auction process, financing requirements, renewable-energy options and battery energy storage systems (BESS).
NEPRA Director General Licensing Imtiaz Hussain Baloch provided regulatory insights on the mathematical and structural complexities governing decisions within NEPRA and the wider energy landscape. He emphasized that energy policy requires balancing trade-offs across dozens of conflicting variables, meaning no single market solution can be judged as completely right or wrong.
APTMA Energy Adviser Asim Riaz said the Iran-US war had made energy security one of the world’s biggest challenges. CTBCM, he added, could help Pakistan make better use of domestic energy resources and move towards greater energy self-reliance.
National Productivity Organization Director Aftab Khan said reliance on untrained and low-skilled labour in SMEs increased production costs. He said NPO had conducted resource-efficiency and energy audits at more than 1,000 SMEs and industrial units under a low- or no-investment approach, helping reduce costs and improve productivity.
Director LUMS Energy Institute Naveed Arshad said motors accounted for around 85 per cent of industrial electricity consumption and that energy conservation and digitalisation could reduce electricity consumption by 20 to 30 per cent.
Prof Dr Shahzad Maqsood of Punjab University, highlighted the scientific and commercial potential of industrial waste recycling, distinguishing between waste and trash and between recycling and upcycling. He called for practical interventions, including cleaning industrial drains and landfills, and developing commercially scalable solutions for solar-panel and battery waste.
Dr Syed Ali Abbas Kazmi, HOD EEP, USPCAS-E, NUST, examined the technical and economic implications of industrial solarization and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS). He warned that poorly designed CTBCM rules could create new stranded-cost risks and highlighted grid congestion and the potential for industries to participate in open-market electricity trading.
ADS Energy Transition Officer Ashfa Ashraf called for a shared approach to ESG compliance, arguing that global brands should co-finance sustainability efforts rather than placing the burden solely on manufacturers in the Global South. She outlined the Pakistan Shared Transition Responsibility Consortium’s focus on co-investment, procurement reforms, transparency, data alignment and sustainable manufacturing.
ADS Energy Transition Officer Muhammad Usman Bin Ahmed presented the CTBCM Readiness Toolkit, which helps industrial buyers and sellers assess their technical and financial readiness for bilateral power contracts. He explained how the toolkit models Use of System Charges (UoSC) and System Marginal Price (SMP) imbalance risks to assess market readiness.
During a panel discussion titled “From Compliance Pressure to Collaborative Solutions,” participants stressed co-investment, public-private partnerships, Just Transition principles and Digital Product Passports to strengthen traceability, transparency and equitable brand-supplier collaboration across the textile value chain.
Participants in another panel on “Policy and Institutional Perspectives: CTBCM” examined renewable-energy integration, grid infrastructure and energy efficiency as essential to industrial competitiveness and resilience.
The conference concluded with a broader call for Pakistan to align its industrial, energy and climate policies so that decarbonisation does not become an additional burden on export-oriented manufacturers. Participants stressed that if global brands expect Pakistani suppliers to meet increasingly ambitious climate and sustainability standards, they must also share the investment, technology and financing required to achieve those targets.