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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Pakistan’s exports growing faster than India, Bangladesh post-COVID-19 first wave: Bloomberg

Pakistan's exports have grown faster than regional neighbors India and Bangladesh, due to a timely easing of restrictions

Pakistan’s exports have risen the fastest in the region since March, reported Bloomberg. Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf’s government eased the lockdown restrictions earliest in the region and hence the recovery of the economy began sooner than regional neighbors.

Bangladesh and India both suffered worse lockdowns. India has suffered many times the COVID-19 cases that Pakistan has. Since working conditions were restored significantly quicker in Pakistan, Outbound shipments have grown at a faster pace than Bangladesh and India as textiles, which account for half of the total export, led the recovery, data show. Islamabad saw total shipments grow 7% in September, compared with New Delhi’s 6% and Dhaka’s 3.5%.

Read more: Op-ed: Fee hike in exports has left Pakistani businesses rattled

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s administration was the first in the region to ease pandemic restrictions, allowing export units to reopen in April, a month after locking them down to stem the spread of Covid-19. That’s helped draw companies from Guess? Inc., Hugo Boss AG, Target Corp., and Hanesbrands Inc. to the South Asian nation, according to people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity since details about buyers is private, said Bloomberg further.

Andleeb Abbas, a member of the PTI party, tweeted the data from Bloomberg.

Pakistan’s exports have shown great resilience

Back in July, Advisor for Commerce, Textile, Industry, and Production, and Investment of Pakistan, Abdul Razak Dawood had appreciated exporters for showing good performance during the Fiscal Year 2019-2020 as compared to the regional counterparts, on his Twitter.

Taking to his Twitter handle, he had written that: ‘I want to congratulate all our exporters on the good performance in 2019-20, in spite of the very challenging situation caused by COVID-19. Our exporters were only 6% less than 2019-20, while our regional countries Bangladesh was down 17% and India down by 14%.’

Read more: Pakistani ports cheapest route for Central Asian exports to Gulf: Uzbekistan

Earlier in July this year, Abdul Razzak had lauded the exporters for their contribution to Pakistan’s economic recovery, due to their continued momentum and expansion of exports with new products and more geographical diversification. ‘Overall declining trend in exports, due to COVID, has been arrested’, he had said.

‘The good performance was also due to the timely lifting of the lockdown and the good coordination between Federal and Provincial agencies at the daily meetings of NCOC. Out Exporters deserve every praise for their effort, hard work, and reaching out to our customers’, he had also said.

Pakistan’s economy has shown resilience throughout the year, especially during the first two-quarters of FY20, as compared to the previous years. The fourth quarter depicted a drastic fall in exports, mainly due to the disturbance in business activity by the Coronavirus.

GVS News Desk