Trade deficit widens to $20.746 billion

In October last year the total foreign exchange reserves of Pakistan had improved to 16.24 billion dollars mark, from where the reserves have depleted to 13.13 billion dollars till last week, showing a decrease of over 3 billion dollars in reserves in few months.
The imbalance was mainly because of very high trade imbalance which was substantially aided by the services imbalance.
The TDAP data showed that the major contribution of export went to Textile and Garment sector in last fiscal as sector’s total export was amounted to $10.621 billion dollars against $10.835billion dollars of same period of previous fiscal 2006-07.
The government initially had set the target of $12. 216 billion dollars for Textile and Garment sector in outgoing fiscal.
Meanwhile, exporting the other core categories of rice, leather products, sports goods, surgical instruments and petroleum products, the country earned $5.507b in last fiscal.
Similarly, in the exports of developmental categories, Pakistan received $2.139b in last FY08.
It may be noted here that there has always been observed the large variation in the official economic-based statistics of three governmental organizations, namely State Bank of Pakistan, Federal Bureau of Statistics and Trade Development Authority Pakistan in trade data.