By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s textile exports edged up nearly 2% in the first eleven months of the current fiscal year, a measured advance that obscures sharply divergent performance across the sector’s main product lines, official data released Tuesday showed.
Shipments of textile goods totaled $16.665 billion in the July–May period of fiscal year 2025-26, compared with $16.365 billion a year earlier, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics — a gain of 1.83% that leaves the industry tracking well short of the double-digit growth rates that policymakers have been targeting.
The headline figure masks a split between finished and semi-processed goods. Ready-made garments and knitwear, which together account for more than half of total textile export revenues, drove the advance. Garment exports rose 5.43% to $3.973 billion, while knitwear climbed 1.03% to $4.602 billion — gains that reflect sustained demand from European and American buyers for value-added apparel. Bed wear, another high-margin category, added 2.23% to reach $2.902 billion.
Cotton yarn exports registered one of the stronger performances in the data, jumping 13.35% to $701.1 million from $618.5 million, as spinning mills benefited from improved raw material availability. Raw cotton shipments more than tripled in percentage terms, though from a small base — rising to $2.6 million from $871,000. Made-up articles, excluding towels and bed wear, increased 1.17% to $721.6 million.
The picture darkened, however, for cotton cloth, where exports fell 7.43% to $1.560 billion from $1.686 billion — a drop of more than $125 million that represents one of the more significant drags on the overall figure. Art silk and synthetic textiles shed 9.73% to reach $330.1 million, while yarn other than cotton fell 8.44% to $28.1 million. Tents, canvas, and tarpaulin exports retreated 4.29% to $112.7 million. Towel exports, by contrast, were essentially flat, slipping a marginal 0.01% to $995.3 million.
The near-term trajectory looks more encouraging. On a year-on-year basis, textile exports surged 7.13% in May 2026 alone, reaching $1.640 billion against $1.50 billion in May 2025. Month-on-month, the May figure marked a 10.80% jump from $1.480 billion in April 2026, though some of that sequential improvement likely reflects seasonal restocking patterns ahead of the Northern Hemisphere summer.
The textile data came alongside broader trade figures that showed Pakistan’s total merchandise exports in May 2026 reached a provisional $2.690 billion, up 9% from $2.468 billion in April and a slender 0.71% higher than the $2.671 billion recorded in May 2025. Textile shipments accounted for roughly 61% of total export revenues last month, underscoring how heavily the country’s foreign-exchange earnings depend on the performance of a single sector.
Pakistan’s textile industry — which employs tens of millions of workers across spinning, weaving, finishing, and garment operations — has struggled this fiscal year with elevated energy costs and a challenging global trade environment, even as the rupee’s relative stability has provided some relief on input pricing. The latest data suggest that exporters of finished goods with stronger brand relationships and longer-order books are navigating conditions more effectively than those supplying commodity-grade fabric and yarn further up the production chain.
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