Staff Reporter Islamabad
Pakistan’s textile and clothing exports posted im-pressive growth in the first quarter of this year, in-creasing by 27.41 per cent to $4.42 billion com-pared to $3.46bn over the year, data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) showed on Sat-urday.
The growth momentum is steady in the export proceeds on the back of rising demand from global market coupled with massive depreciation of the rupee as exports posted a growth of over 25pc in September from a year ago.
It is believed that the easing of lockdown in North America and European countries — top mar-kets for Pakistani textile goods — will help boost the exports.
The demand for textiles collapsed dur-ing the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, but eventually recovered in the outgoing fiscal year.
In the last budget, the government had drasti-cally reduced duty and taxes on imports of several hundred raw materials to bring down the input cost of exportable products. Liquidity issues were also resolved to a large extent by timely releasing re-funds as well as payment of cash subsidies.
The government is also finalising a proposal to give subsidy on gas, LNG and electricity to the export-oriented industries.
Surge to $4.42bn in the first quarter of this fiscal year The PBS data showed ready-made garments exports jumped by 22.77pc in value and in quantity by 19.76pc during July-Sept FY22, while those of knitwear edged up 32.97pc in value and 1.30pc in quantity, bed wear posted positive growth of 23.30pc in value and 23.41pc in quantity.
