Pakistan’s textile exports seem to have largely recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic shocks and are still growing. The recent monthly data published by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics for the first four months of the current financial year confirms that the textile and clothing export shipments are back on growth trajectory both in terms of their quantity and dollar value.
The data shows that the textile shipments have surged by 3.8 per cent to $4.8 billion between July and October from $4.6bn a year ago. The rise in the textile and clothing group has been a wee faster than the 0.6pc growth in the overall export. The export recovery is most prominent in the knitwear, home textiles and denim segments.
There is also a significant decline in certain cases — in the shipments of the basic textile commodities such as yarn and grey cloth, indicating that the country is exporting more value-added products than ever before. The local cotton prices have peaked to a 10-year high on account of a sharp drop of 37.6pc in the cotton arrivals for ginning to 4.6 million bales by December 3 compared with 7.4m bales last year.
The government has recently announced a lucrative energy package for the industry to help the exporters recuperate from the Covid 19 shock. The package does away with peak electricity rates, offers reduced tariffs on additional power consumption, and fixes power price at $0.07 a unit and gas tariff at $0.065mmbtu for the export industries.
The external factors that have helped the orders from the West to almost double since July, according to Mr Khurram, include the US-China tensions, and ongoing supply disruptions induced by the Covid-19 pandemic in India and Bangladesh. “These factors have helped Pakistan grab additional export orders from Europe and America. With Vietnam and Cambodia already working to their full capacity, the buyers had only Pakistan, where manufacturers had idle production capacity, to turn to.
“Europe remains our biggest buyer at the moment as the demand in the US remains subdued owing to rising infections there. But many like us are now planning to expand our production capacity, hoping we can increase and retain our market share in future as well.”
He concludes: “we are seeing unprecedented growth in textile & clothing exports. The new orders are a windfall for Pakistan’s industry. How long will this windfall last? You never know. It can sustain for years to come and it can fizzle out soon. It all depends on how we want to steer this industry into the future.”
