Widening trade deficit: Lawmakers treat declining exports with indifference

Commerce minister winds up NA debate within five minutes

ISLAMABAD:

Parliamentarians it seems are least concerned about Pakistan’s ever-increasing trade deficit amounting to billions of dollars. The trade deficit in the first seven months of the current fiscal year stands at $13.7 billion.

Almost two weeks after the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) made public the official trade data, few lawmakers have attempted to draw the attention of the National Assembly to the grave situation.

The assembly secretariat kept the matter as the last item on the agenda during Thursday’s proceedings. Once the issue was taken up, the commerce minister took less than five minutes to conclude the debate without any tangible replies.

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) had approached the NA secretariat on Wednesday to discuss the widening trade deficit, especially the steep decline of exports in the textile sector.

The opposition lawmakers said they wanted to discuss the “worrisome decline in textile exports despite the fact Pakistan enjoyed duty-free access to European markets under GSP+ preferential tariff scheme”.

PPP MNAs Shazia Marri, Nafeesa Shah, Aijaz Jakhrani, Imran Leghari and Shabbir Bijarani moved the notice, but except Nafeesa no one raised any query.

Unsatisfied with the minister’s reply, she said the government was unwilling to admit many textile units had shut down and the government had failed to pass on the benefits of declining petroleum prices to the masses.

“Our production cost is much higher than our competitors,” she remarked. This stops Pakistan from taking advantage of the concessions offered under the GSP+ scheme.

Despite the plunging global crude oil prices, Pakistan’s trade deficit worsened to over $13 billion in the first seven months of 2015-16 as the value of imports, for the first time, more than doubled the value of exports.

According to PBS figures, the trade deficit – the gap between exports and imports – widened 4.3% between July 2015 and January 2016. Total exports plunged to $12.1 billion around $2.1 billion less than the receipts in the same period last fiscal year. Imports contracted by 5.4% to $25.7 billion that were $1.5 billion less than the comparative period last year.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 26^th, 2016.