By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s exports and imports both fell more than 12 percent in July, the first month of the new fiscal year, as the country faced a dollar crunch and a slowdown in imports of non essentials goods, official data showed on Tuesday.
The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) said exports dropped 12.7 percent to $2.057 billion in July from a year earlier, while imports plunged 26.4 percent to $3.66 billion.
The trade deficit narrowed 41.2 percent to $1.61 billion in July from $2.73 billion a year ago, the PBS said.
The decline in imports was partly due to the government’s decision to slowdown the import of several non-essential items, such as cars, mobile phones, cosmetics and cheese, to save foreign exchange reserves.
Pakistan has been struggling with a balance of payments crisis that has forced it to seek a $3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The IMF approved the loan in June, but attached tough conditions, including fiscal consolidation, exchange rate flexibility and structural reforms.
The PBS also released the services trade data for the fiscal year 2022-23 that ended in June. It showed that the services trade deficit shrank 87.7 percent to $719.4 million from $5.84 billion a year earlier.
Services exports rose 2.78 percent to $7.3 billion, while services imports fell 38 percent to $8.02 billion in 2022-23, the PBS said.
In June, the services trade deficit was $84 million, down 87.4 percent from $664.9 million a year ago. Services exports fell 14 percent to $571 million, while services imports dropped 50.7 percent to $655 million in June, the PBS said.
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