More than six years after the government of Pakistan plans to build a garment city, the country's first ready-made garment city will finally start construction at the end of this month. According to Rana Muhammad Farooq Saeed Khan, Pakistan's Federal Minister of textiles, the launching ceremony of Karachi garment city is scheduled for the last week of July.

Plans for the preparation of three garment cities in Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad were first proposed by the government of Pakistan in the trade policy of 2003-04.

The plan is fully funded by the government of Pakistan. So far, about 400 million Pakistan rupee ($4 million 700 thousand) export development fund has been received.

Up to now, a lot of time has been spent on the land acquisition and site preparation of the garment city base: from the distance of Karachi55 km to the Ghaghar Phatak area near the Qasim port, it covers an area of 300 acres, and the first phase will carry out the planning and layout of the 50 acres of the park.

The target system is to build Karachi garment city to become a production and marketing settlement with more than 500 sets of seams for export, so as to provide the manufacturers of Pakistan to build a garment production line in the park. It is expected to produce 6 million dozen garments annually, with an export turnover of US $200 million and provide 30 thousand job opportunities.

The park will include knitted and woven garments, accessories (trademarks, sewing threads, zippers, buttons, cartons and plastic bags, etc.), as well as warehouses (dyestuffs, chemicals, fabrics) and industrial washing facilities.

Karachi garment city will be operated by a joint venture between the government and the people.

As for the promotion of Faisalabad and Lahore, the two parks also made some progress. The government of Pakistan revealed earlier this year that it was planning to build 500 acres of the largest garment city in Hyderabad.