By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s technology exports rose 17.4% in the first two months of the new fiscal year, extending a run of double-digit gains that has turned the software and call-centre industry into one of the country’s most reliable sources of foreign exchange.
Exports of computer services and call-centre operations totalled $811 million in July and August, up from $691 million a year earlier, according to data released Wednesday. The increase came even as the monthly pace cooled, with August shipments falling to $394 million from $417 million in July, a decline of about 6%.
The pullback from July’s total didn’t dent the broader trend. Compared with a year earlier, August exports climbed 16.9% from $337 million, keeping the sector on the same growth trajectory that has characterised much of the past year.
Technology and telecommunications exports have become the backbone of Pakistan’s services trade, a shift that’s taken on added significance as the country works to narrow a persistent gap between what it sells abroad and what it imports. The category — grouped under telecommunications, computer and information services in the balance-of-payments data — accounted for roughly 45% of total services exports of $1.811 billion in the two-month period, more than any other segment by a wide margin.
Total services exports rose 29% from $1.405 billion a year earlier, a pace that outstripped growth in merchandise trade and helped offset some of the pressure from a widening deficit in goods.
Other service categories also expanded. Travel receipts more than doubled to $222 million from $90 million, while transport services rose to $178 million from $131 million. Exports of other business services increased to $420 million from $303 million.
The gains in services weren’t enough to prevent the combined trade deficit in goods and services from widening. The shortfall reached $6.752 billion in July and August, compared with $5.964 billion in the same period last year, as import growth outpaced export growth on the merchandise side.
Goods exports rose to $5.445 billion from $5.238 billion, a modest increase of about 4%. Imports, meanwhile, climbed more sharply, to $11.635 billion from $10.449 billion, a jump of roughly 11% that widened the goods trade gap even as shipments abroad grew.
The divergence underscores a dynamic that has shaped Pakistan’s external accounts for much of the past year: services, and technology exports in particular, expanding fast enough to provide meaningful relief, but not fast enough to offset the pull of rising import demand.
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