KARACHI, Aug 24: In these times when Pakistan textile industry is operating at its potential best in terms of quality and quantity, it is beset with serious low value problem in the US export market where average unit price has gone down by about 28 per cent to 1.16 dollars in January to August 9 period this year as against 1.61 dollars obtained in same period in 2001.

Latest official figures show that the US remains the single largest market to absorb Pakistan’s textile quota items in terms of value from where exporters fetched 610.71 million dollars in last more than seven months. This is roughly 50 per cent of the total 1.29 billion dollars earned from all the textile export quota countries.

Overall, the total textile exports to the quota countries—USA, Canada, EU and Turkey—has gone up to 1.29 billion dollars during January to August 9 this year. In same period in 2001 total textile exports to these countries was worth 1.26 billion dollars.

An analysis of textile quota export reveals that there is a declining trend in value in the North American countries—the US and Canada. However, the EU market offers relatively an encouraging scenario where textile exports have increased both in quantity and value terms. Turkey is another market where a jump in textile exports both in quantity and value is visible.

Canada’s export quota market shrunk for Pakistan textile in last seven months to 23.97 million dollars from 32.12 million dollars a year before. The European Union market offered 625.33 million dollars as against 546.31 million dollars last year showing a a jump of 14.65 per cent. In quantity terms textile exports went up by 13.24 per cent during last seven months. The improvement in average unit price was just marginal to 0.50 dollars this year from 0.49 dollars last year.

A significant development in textile export quota trade is emergence of Turkey as a potential market for Pakistani products after signing of recent agreements. Pakistan’s textile exports to Turkey rose to over 35 million dollars almost by 39.26 per cent this year in value and almost 70 per cent in quantity.

Textile exporters foresee better prospects in the remaining period of this year and are confident of fetching 2.80 to 3 billion dollars from textile export quota trade in 2002.

“In last seven months the total quota utilization is about 43 per cent and we hope to gain pace in the remaining five months,” a leading textile exporter said.

During 2001 Pakistan’s earning from quota countries stood at 2.32 billion dollars as against 2.21 billion dollars. This improvement was achieved in 2001 amidst all reports of cancellation and deferment of export orders from abroad, an economic slow-down at home and building up of inventory in the textile units. Pakistan performed well in 2001, virtually across the board, in utilization of textile export quotas to the US, Canada and the EU, both in terms of quantity and value.

In terms of hard cash, exporters fetched a hefty amount of about 1.18 billion dollars from the US market, 1.03 billion dollars from the EU and 54.43 million dollars from Canada and 46.54 million dollars from Turkey during 2001.

This export performance came in wake of a study of the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma), which had then pointed out a build up of 58 per cent higher inventory in the textile units till end October in 01.