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The potential of surgical instruments industry an earner of sizeable foreign exchange needs to be fully explored. For this purpose constant efforts are required to improve international competitiveness in terms of quality, range of products, and favourable trade agreements with foreign countries.

Pakistan and Germany are the only two major suppliers of surgical instruments in the world. Korea, France, Hungary, Poland and England are also in the field but their exports are negligible. In terms of cheap labour, 100-year old localised skills, suitable monetary and fiscal incentives, and world-wide reputation, Pakistan has all those textbook advantages which are associated with localisation of industries. However, technological and managerial inadequacies, with reference to fastly changing global medical requirements, and advanced countries' protectionist policies stand in the way of Pakistani exporters capturing the entire world market.

Structural Dimension

Exports of surgical instruments accounted for only 1.4 per cent of Pakistan's total exports in 1990-91 but during the decades 1980-90 they increased at an average annual rate of over 22 per cent. This growth continues unabated. However, the industry presently consists of about 400 small and medium labour intensive production units, providing jobs to over 40,000 workers. Joint-venturing and subcontracting with small skilled workers or makers is quite common. The number of registered exporters and manufacturers-cum-exporters has reached the figure of 2000, though the major international suppliers are about two dozens.

Origin

Pakistan's surgical instruments industry is almost entirely located in Sialkot, the birth place of the great thinker and visionary Iqbal. As we know from the history of growth of industrial towns, sometimes an industry gets started and localized in a place just by accident and not because of any initial natural economic or cost advantage. This is precisely how surgical industry organised in Sialkot, a city located in the vicinity of Himalayan foothills, about 900 miles north-east of the nearest seaport of Karachi.

In the beginning of the present century a surgeon of Sialkot Mission Hospital asked his patient, Ahmad Din, a blacksmith by profession, to repair some of his surgical instruments which he needed urgently. In those times such instruments used to be sent to London for repair which took almost a year due to logistic problems. Ahmad Din repaired the instruments to the entire satisfaction of the surgeon. Impressed by his fine work, the …

Source: Surgical instruments industry can capture the world market. (Pakistan) - Economic Review | HighBeam Research - FREE trial


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