Shifting patterns: Pakistan’s exports tilting to Asia, away from GCC, US

[yazdi]

Re: Shifting patterns: Pakistan’s exports tilting to Asia, away from GCC, US

@khoji

It is nice to see that Pakistani exports are tilting towards Asia more. But it is also true that most Pakistani export is raw materials like cotton.
So what it indicates is that our exports are tilting mostly because Asia is producing more than America/Europe.

This tilt is not deliberate at all on the part of Pakistani government. The exports (mostly raw material) are just following the natural pattern of production in the world.

Pakistani export trend in last 5/10 years was shifting from finished goods to intermediate goods. Increase in export to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and China is mainly these intermediate goods like denim, bottoms fabric, shirting, leather etc etc. A lot of these intermediate goods are converted in to finished products for EU/USA in these countries. Exporters of these intermediate goods get their products approved from the final customers in EU/USA and ship these products to their vendors in these manufacturing countries. For example exports to Bangladesh have increased tremendously in last five years, but an in depth analysis of these exports will reveal that the goods exported to Bangladesh hardly constitute any significant volumes meant for Bangladesh consumers.

So this so called shift of export reliance on Asian countries hardly depicts the reality..