Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry has called upon the government to come forward and cooperate with private sector in product & market diversification and value addition of exportable products to realize the country’s actual export potential.

 

Muzzamil Hussain Sabri, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that despite possessing great potential to promote exports, Pakistan has missed its export targets for the third consecutive year, which should be a cause of concern for the policy makers.  He said government had projected an export target of $27 billion for 2014-15, but could achieve actual exports of $24.2 billion. Similarly export target of $26.9 billion for 2013-14 was missed by over $1.8 billion while export target of 2012-13 was also missed by almost similar amount.

 

He said that one of the main reasons of missing export targets was that Pakistan’s export base was quite narrow and was concentrated in few low value added products like cotton and cotton manufactures, leather products, rice, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and sports goods as these products accounted for about 64 percent of country’s total exports for the past many years. 

 

Muzzamil Sabri said another factor of Pakistan’s low exports was that its exports were focused on few countries as almost 60 percent of our exports were going to traditional markets like US, China, UAE, Afghanistan, UK, Germany, France, Bangladesh, Italy and Spain. However, after the recession, Western and European countries were still struggling for economic revival and due to low demand in these countries, our exports could not pick up pace despite grant of GSP Plus status by the European Union.

 

He said Pakistani exports could achieve much higher earnings by focusing on product & market diversification and value addition. He stressed that government should facilitate the private sector in diversifying export base and adding value to exportable products.

 

He was of the view that Pakistan has great potential to promote exports of many other products including marble & granite, engineering goods, IT products, fruits & vegetables, meat products, dairy products, value added textiles products etc. He said there was an urgent need to focus on non-traditional markets including Central Asia, Africa and other emerging markets which offered plenty of opportunities for promoting exports of Pakistan’s good quality and value added products.