April 25, 2019: Pakistan shipped US$18 billion worth of products around the globe during Jul- March 2018-2019, depicting a decline of 3% compared to same period last year. Despite the number of initiatives taken by the current government for enhancement of exports, Pakistan has failed to increase its exports in the last couple of months.
Diversifying the export market would be a key in the enhancement of export proceeds as Pakistan's exports rely on only few markets i.e. the United States, China, UK, Afghanistan, United Arab Emirates, Germany and Netherlands.
As per the data released by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), among the top trading partners, USA increased its import purchases from Pakistan as its share of imports in Pakistan's overall exports increased to 17% from 16% in Jul-March FY18. In the second place was the UK as its imports accounted for 7.4% of Pakistan's exports during Jul-March FY19, up from 7.38% recorded in same period last fiscal year.
Despite FTA signed between Pakistan and China, the growth in China's imports from Pakistan did not witness any significant increase as the exports from Pakistan to China during the period under review increased to 1.3billion dollars as compared to the exports of 1.29 billion dollars recorded during Jul-March 2018-19.
Moreover, during the period under review, there were three decliners YoY namely, Germany (down by 5%), Afghanistan (down by 25%) and Spain (down by 2%).
