With few natural resources found locally for example, Sri Lanka has no oil and grows no cotton its textile companies cannot compete with China's or Bangladesh's on price.
Nadeem Babar is addressing Pakistan's severe power shortage right where it's needed the most: in the wheat and cotton fields and the textile factories spread across the vital Punjab province.
China has been stockpiling a mountain of cotton, presumably to insulate its textile makers from shocks.
In one programme, the central government has encouraged the movement of textile factories to areas where cotton is grown.
China's textile mills are importing more cotton than many had expected, and the demand is helping to give the global market for the commodity a boost.
Because hemp requires much less irrigation, and around half as much land as cotton to produce the same amount of textile, supporters of legalisation say it is much more environmentally friendly.
The country used to have factories to spin cotton into thread and there were even several textile factories producing clothes, but they've all shut their doors.
The increase in cotton output is expected to enable India to increase domestic textile production and exports.
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Think of textile manufacturing in the South and you may picture cotton mills in North Carolina.
Once, U.S. cotton growers' biggest customer was the U.S. textile industry.
But in the 1990s, textile makers' losses to low-wage countries turned cotton into one of America's most export-dependent crops, with nearly 80% now consumed abroad.
With demand from textile factories in southern China plunging, the province's cotton growers had to seek government subsidies in 2008.
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