Pakistan’s textile exports have shown a significant growth of 32 percent to reach $11.148 billion in July-April, 2011 due to higher commodity prices in the international market, the official data showed on Wednesday.
The textile exports jumped 46.56 percent last month to $1.27 billion against April last year, according to the figures released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS).
Analysts attributed this increase to the phenomenal rise in cotton prices across the world, which helped exporters fetch a better price for their produce.
“Exports rose in value terms only because of costly cotton around the globe,” an analyst said.
During the fiscal year, the cotton producing countries faced serious problems such as floods in Brazil and export ban on cotton yarn by India, the analyst added.
The current pace of textile exports depends on the global cotton estimates for the next year, the experts said.
The flash floods in August 2010 also lowered the cotton output estimates for the current fiscal year from 14 million bales to 11.7 million bales, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said in a recently issued report.
Despite the fall in cotton output in the country the exports of the raw materials went up by 35.83 percent to $263.57 million from 194.05 million.
However, this is mainly due to higher prices in the international market because the exported quantity fell by 29 percent.
Analysts also attributed the rise in exports to higher demand of Pakistan’s finished and semi-finished products in the European Union and the United States economies after facing recession period during the last two years. Textile exports have shared around 55 percent in the country’s total exports of $20.154 billion during July-April 2010/11.
The SBP in its report said that the current trend of textile exports would help the country have record exports in the current fiscal year.
