Pakistan's textile exports crossed $8 billion mark registering a growth of 7 percent during first nine months (July-March) of the current fiscal year (2006-07), according to official statistics on Saturday.
According to statistics, textile exports remained at $8.027 billion during nine months of the current fiscal year were higher by $525.682 million against $7.501 billion of the same period of last fiscal year (2005-06).
Month on month basis, the country's textile exports witnessed 11 percent rise at $987.484 million in March 2007, depicting an increase of $95.27 million, against $892.214 million of March 2006. Textile exports in March 2007 also showed an increase of $198.923 million, or 25 percent, against $788.561 million recorded in February 2007.
Leading textile exporters are of the view that textile exports have started to rise after 5-6 percent research and development (R&D) support announced by the government on export of textile, knitting and some other textile products. Major increase has been recorded in the raw material products like yarn and cotton yarn, they said.
They said that 7 percent growth in textile export during July-March was still below the target of 18 percent growth. "Current statistics show that despite all efforts we will not achieve the textile export target of $10.15 billion," they added.
Statistics show that out of 12, only four textile products, including raw cotton, cotton cloth, cotton carded and bed-wear exports have decline by 2-51 percent during July-March 2007, while other products' exports including readymade garments, synthetic textile, yarn, knitwear, art and silk exports rose by 2-159 percent. Raw cotton exports declined by 15 percent; cotton cloth by 7 percent; cotton-carded 51 percent and bedwear by 2 percent.
However, synthetic textiles have shown record growth of 159 percent to $377.949 million. Cloth exports rose by 3.41 percent, yarn by 145 percent, knitwear by 15 percent and towels by 2 percent during this period.
Similarly, made-ups exports increased by 5 percent, tents by 133 percent, readymade garments 9 percent, and exports of other textile sectors registered 21 percent growth. Exporters said that growth in textile exports did not show good performance of industry and if the R&D support would not continue, textile exports would again start declining.