Constantly deflecting blame
When the Minister of Commerce Khurram Dastgir Khan says that both internal and external factors are responsible for Pakistan’s abysmal exports situation he fails to emphasise on two things: the fact that it is more to do with internal policies and negligence and the actual severity of the problem.
Yes, the slowdown in the Chinese economy has caused a global lull with many developing export-based countries like Brazil and Australia feeling the squeeze but in Pakistan’s case, it is a small part of a much serious problem.
Pakistan’s exports have fallen by 15.4 per cent in the last three years from $ 24.58 billion in 2012-13 to 20.8 billion in 2015-16. Another important figure that the commerce minister fails to highlight is the embarrassingly low number of 7.3 percent that exports contribute to our GDP, compared to Vietnam’s 90 percent and Bangladesh’s quickly increasing 17 percent.
Perpetual energy generation problems have forced small to medium sized exporters to close shop. The larger exporters are also unable to churn out an acceptable margin due to unpaid promised refunds by the government, increasing old taxes and introducing new taxes along with a stable but artificially appreciated exchange rate on the back of borrowed dollar reserves that make our exports expensive.
As an import based economy with a loan repayment schedule that is never-ending not to mention below average tax revenue collection, we need exports to pick up the slack. Our export base is quite narrow as well with a few items being exported to even fewer countries.
The government has to take responsibility and formulate new policies to regain the lost trust and confidence of the export industry. Exporters have already diversified into the retail and real estate sector as they are unable to survive under current outdated policies. Therefore the time to act is now otherwise there might not be an export industry left to revive.
