By Najamul Hassan ISLAMABAD, Oct 23 (APP):Struggling hard against odds like economic recession globally and devastating flood at home, the country has started showing improvement in its economic indicators with exports solely increasing by 40 percent during first quarter of current financial year.
Rupee value against US dollar has improved and with the concerted efforts of the coalition government, the country is gradually steering out of the fears of bankruptcy as the leading PML-N’s economic managers are also toiling hard to rescue common people from clutches of price hike.
The current account deficit is shrinking and efforts are on to increase foreign exchange reserves besides lowering the interest rate and ensuring incentives to boost agriculture sector and ensure food security for the population growing at the rate of around two percent.
The country’s exports standing at Rs 1.147 trillion during July-September 2021-22, have shown 39.9 percent increase with its tally touching Rs 1.605 trillion during July-September 2022-23 as reported by the Bureau of Statistics.
“We have taken series of initiatives to promote exports and achieve sustainable and inclusive economic growth, poverty reduction and improvement in the living standard of the people,” said Minister for Commerce Syed Naveed Qamar.
“The main focus of our strategy is to achieve the objectives of economic revival. We are working with all stakeholders and exploring all avenues to stand the economy on sound footing, enhance exports and create maximum job opportunities,” he added.
“We need to attract investment in textiles and apparel sectors and fully employ SMEs as engine of our growth to enhance our manufacturing capacities,” Naveed Qamar remarked.
Few months back when PTI leader Imran Khan was dethroned through a no confidence move, the country was facing serious challenges of bankruptcy. But, the coalition government, soon after coming into power, took several measures to improve economic condition and enhancing exports.
National Priority Sectors Export Strategy (NPSES) is one of the initiatives taken for fulfilling the country’s ambition of enhancing exports and earning more foreign exchange.
The five-year (2023-2027) strategies are the result of a consultative process between public and private-sectors meant for addressing constraints and taking specific steps to avail opportunities in a comprehensive manner as specified in Pakistan’s Strategic Trade Policy Framework (STPF).
The NPSES provides Pakistan with a set of sectoral and functional strategies and implementing these strategies would mean strengthening and diversifying the economy by creating investment opportunities and more jobs and improved competitiveness of exports.
According to officials at the Commerce Ministry, under this strategy, sectors like engineering goods, leather, processed food and beverages, fruits and vegetables, meat and poultry, pharmaceuticals, software development and services, business process outsourcing, logistics and institutional coordination have been prioritized.
“Look Africa Policy’ has started yielding positive results with respect to making inroads into the vast African countries’ markets,” the official said. “Keeping in view the huge trade potential with Central Asian States, we are also endeavoring to ink more trade agreements with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.”
“Pakistan has already inked a preferential trade agreement with Uzbekistan while trade deal with Kyrgyzstan was nearing completion,” the official added.
According to latest data released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the country’s goods exports have increased by around two percent to $7.125 billion during first quarter (Jul-Sept) of current fiscal year (2022-23) as compared to the same period previous year.
The main commodities of exports during September, 2022 were knitwear (Rs100,580 million), ready made garments (Rs 63,821 million), bed wear (Rs 61,630 million), cotton cloth (Rs 46,819 million), towels (Rs 20,115 million), rice other than Basmati (Rs 17,527 million), cotton yarn (Rs 17,471 million), made-up articles, excluding towels and Bedwear (Rs 14,764 million), rice Basmati (Rs 9,865 million) and fish and fish preparations (Rs 9,645 million).
Furthermore, the government has also been engaged to take measures for boosting the country’s IT export and have set the target of $15 billion of annual exports in next five years.
Pakistan has already posted unprecedented increase in the IT exports in past few years as the exports have increased to $2.6 billion in Fiscal Year 2021-22 compared to $1.6 billion in FY19 showing an increase of 65 percent.
Meanwhile, Minister for Finance and Revenue Ishaq Dar has also reiterated the government’s firm resolve to boost IT sector and its exports.
“This sector has immense potential for growth and could play significant role in strengthening country’s economy,” he had remarked during interaction with the Pakistani-American tech entrepreneurs in Washington earlier this week. “We would ensure robust growth in our IT sector utilizing our full potential.”
To make the export oriented industry more competitive in the international market, the government has also taken several measures including supply of energy at competitive tariffs, disbursement of around Rs 42 billion from April to June 2022 to mitigate prevailing liquidity issues due to severe economic challenges, duty free import of Cotton and reduction of custom duties on import of dyes and chemicals, while continuing with duty free import of textiles and apparel machinery.
The ministry has also formulated Textiles and Apparel Policy, 2020-25 that would address issues like value addition, product diversification, skill development, productivity and ease of doing business etc.
Although the ride ahead is bumpy yet the government is committed to mend the follies of the previous government through result oriented policies for achieving the goal of economic stability and self-sufficiency.
