This may be seen as a fairly encouraging performance, which largely confirms the overall improved tempo in economic activity as has been widely claimed by the government and also commended by the international financing agencies such as the IMF and the Asian Development Bank.
Meanwhile, another important indicator highlighting the sustained pace of economic recovery is the reported 9 percent growth in tax collections during the first half of the current financial year.
The export figures for the half-year apparently conformed to the official projections about growth in exports for the current financial year. The export target, it may be recalled here, has been fixed at $11.065 billion for the current financial year as compared to the last financial year's export receipts of $10.1 billion.
If analysed in the light of the annual target, the export proceeds for the full financial year are likely to exceed $11.065 billion, if the growth rate remains unchanged during the current half of the fiscal year.
According to the official assessment of the factors contributing to a sustained growth in exports, the increases in textile quotas offered by European Union, USA and Turkey appeared to be the major favourable developments. It is reassuring to note that the country's textile industry actively responded to rising demand from buyers by increasing production levels besides achieving improvements in the quality of products and lowering the unit cost to the desired extent.
The textile industry has lately made large scale investments in the process of modernisation and innovation. These efforts appear to have started yielding dividends in the form of larger exports in terms of both higher volume and better unit price.
The official agencies, especially the Export Promotion Bureau, have also contributed significantly to the growth through exploration of non-traditional markets besides holding exhibitions in foreign countries aimed at introducing Pakistan's exportable items to foreign buyers.
The combined efforts of both the private exporters and the official agencies have thus made a welcome impact on the export growth during the first half of the current fiscal year.
The most important factor during this period was the lowest-ever rate of export credit at 1.5 percent which has been brought down to this level by the State Bank of Pakistan from the staggering 13 percent about a year ago. The lowering of the export finance rate, in fact, is in conformity with the historic decline in interest rates in the country's banking sector.
This development has more than compensated for the high cost of manufacturing industries due mainly to the prohibitive power charges in the country as compared to the other countries of the region.
It would appear, however, that the favourable impact of low cost of export finance combined with the drastic reduction in the overall cost of mark-up on loan financing for industrial companies should have induced a still larger growth in exports than what has been recorded.
The imports during the first half of the fiscal year have reportedly registered 14 percent increase to $6.609 billion as compared to $5.787 billion during the corresponding period of last year.
As a result of the imports outstripping the exports, the trade deficit has moderately increased during this period. However, this gap is expected to be reduced considerably during the remaining six months of the fiscal year in view of the official estimates of 5 percent growth in imports for the full year as against an estimated 9.7 percent increase in exports.
The rising tempo of imports has been attributed mainly to acquisition of plant and machinery by the industrial sector for the purpose of BMR in addition to expansion in capacity. This trend augurs well for stepping up investment activity in the manufacturing sector.