Pakistan trade deficit jumped to 2.194 billion dollars during the first two months of (July-August of 2009-10), with both exports and imports declining, according to provisional trade figures released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics on Friday. The trade deficit for the ongoing fiscal is 38.45 per cent less from the last year's 3.564 billion dollars, mainly because of compressed imports.
The exports posted a major decline of 13.78 percent during the first two months (July-August 2009-10) over the same period of last year. The exports also shrank during the period by 26.32 percent and were hardly 2.969 billion dollars as against 3.443 billion dollars for the same period of last year.
A negative 5.36 growth in exports has been seen with total exports at 1.480 billion dollars in August 2009 as against the exports of 1.564 billion dollars in August 2008. Imports declined by 27.03 percent in August and total import volume declined to 2.524 billion dollars in August 2009 as compared to 3.459 billion dollars in August 2008.
Some 44.92 percent decline has been registered in trade deficit during August 2009 over the same period of previous year. With this decline, total deficit stood at 1.043 billion dollars as compared to 1.895 billion dollars in August 2008. A decline of 0.58 percent was witnessed in the country's exports during August over the previous month with exports going down from 1.488 billion dollars in July 2009 to 1.480 billion dollars in August.
Imports declined by 4.36 percent in August 2009 over the previous month. It went down from 2.639 billion dollars in July 2009 to 2.524 billion dollars in August 2009. Trade deficit also declined in August 2009 by 9.25 percent with total deficit at 1.043 billion dollars as compared to 1.150 billion dollars in July 2009.
Trade Policy Framework 2009-12 projected six percent increase in exports during 2009-10, exports to be enhanced by 10 percent during the 2010-11 fiscal year and finally exports to be increased by 13 percent in last fiscal year of 2011-12 of the framework.
However, the new exports target of 18.86 billion dollars for 2009-10 is higher by six percent as against the actual exports realised 17.781 billion dollars during 2008-09. Imports are projected to be 29 billion dollars in 2009-10 and trade deficit is likely to be around 10.14 billion dollars in 2009-10 keeping in view the export target of 18.86 billion dollars.