Agriculture trade performance lauded

Pakistan has improved its international trade performance owing to positive economic reforms in the last five years that have boosted merchandise trade/GDP ratio of the country.
This was stated by Professor Dr Bashir Ahmad, Vice Chancellor University of Agriculture, Faisalabad (UAF), while addressing a seminar on "EU Agricultural Trade Performances for Developing Countries", organised by the EU-Asia Link Programme in the University here on Sunday.
The VC said that the primary commodities exports grew by 23.4 percent to $919.3 million and a significant rise was witnessed in the rice export (30.4 percent) and raw cotton (171.4 percent), which added $200 million to the overall export revenue. He said Pakistan's exports were concentrated to cotton, leather, rice, synthetic textiles and sports goods and these account for 79.3 percent of the total export during the last year with cotton alone contributing 62.3 percent, leather 5.4 percent, rice 5.2 percent and synthetic textiles 3.8 percent.
Such a high degree of concentration of export in a few items was a major cause of instability in our export earnings, expressed Professor Bashir.
Earlier, HEC Advisor Dr Riaz Hussain Qureshi said that Pakistan was trading with a large number of countries but its exports were highly concentrated in few countries. About one-half of Pakistan's exports were with USA, Germany, Japan, UK, Hong Kong, Dubai and Saudi Arabia, he added.
HEC advisor also said among these countries the maximum export proceeds came from USA making up one-fourth of the total. Negotiations would start soon at Hong Kong, he said and added it was expected that rich countries would press for more opening of markets in the developing countries by lowering tariff. Humboldt University of Berlin Agriculture Trade and Development Assistant Professor Dr Herald Grethe pointed out the problems and objectives of the EU agriculture trade for developing countries.
He spoke about the increasing relevance of complex system of agricultural trade preferences being applied by the EU, conflicts in many cases with the WTO's most favourite nation principle that would ensure equal and non-discriminatory treatment of WTO members. UAF Faculty of Agriculture Economics and Rural Sociology Dean Professor Dr Muhammad Asghar Cheema also stated that the government was trying to reform and build an atmosphere conducive for enhancing competitiveness by introducing measures for strengthening economic, social and physical infrastructure.
In fact the extraordinary 38 percent growth in imports overshadowed the impact of the 16 percent jump in exports during FY05.
Pakistan's exports performed fairly well during FY05 despite the rising global competitive challenges in the post MFA regime, which were compounded by loss of duty free access to the EU since January 2005; the imposition of antidumping duty by the EU on its bed wear imports from Pakistan; and relatively higher inflation compared to the trading partners and competitors.
Encouragingly, data shows that the trade deficit during FY05 was primarily caused by higher imports of machinery, raw material (which may be helpful in improving the capacity use as well as in expanding the productive capacity of the economy, thereby leading to a broad-based increase in economic activities) and petroleum products (reflecting the impact of persistently higher oil prices in the international market and rising consumption in the growing economy). Professor Dr HJ Schwartz from the Humboldt University and Dr Philip Hollington, EU-NCO Project Co-ordinator from Germany also attended the seminar.