‘Exports remained protected from external shocks arising from geopolitical tensions, depreciation of major currencies and US-China trade war’

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan trade balance has improved by 19pc, as the deficit declined from $37.6 billion to $30.6 billion during the last fiscal year.

“The country’s exports remained stable at around $23 billion,” the one-year performance report shared by the Establishment Division revealed. “Pakistani exports were protected from external shocks arising from regional geopolitical uncertainty in the wake of Pulwama incident, depreciation of major currencies and trade war between two major markets, the United States and China.”

According to the report, the stability in exports was due to various policy interventions, the extension of PM’s Export Enhancement Package for three years, relief to five major export sectors in terms of energy prices, rationalisation ofof Pakistan’s global exports and $64 billion worth of Chinese imports.

China allowed duty-free market access to Pakistani textiles and food items, including yarn, sugar and rice, worth $1 billion.

As an appendage to Pakistan-Indonesia Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA), Pakistan also managed to get unilateral market access from Indonesia on 20 products.

According to the report, following Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to Qatar in January 2019, the eight-year-old ban on Pakistani basmati rice was lifted and a tender for procurement of 4,000 tonnes of Pakistani basmati rice was issued in July 2019.

Pakistan had also received a 500,000MT rice export order from Iran. In addition, the government revived technical level talks with South Korea to negotiate on a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which had been stalled since 2017.

The government initiated legal