November 24, 2002	Sunday	Ramazan 18, 1423

ISLAMABAD, Nov 23: Pakistan would demand greater access for its new products especially the textile goods to the United States market, a senior official has told Dawn.

The issue would be raised in a first-ever meeting of Pakistan-US Joint Working Group on Trade and Investment scheduled for next month in the US.

Pakistan would be represented by a high level official delegation in the forum, which was recently constituted by the commerce ministries of both the countries.

Elaborating the agenda of the meeting, the official said, during the proposed meeting greater market access, support in international forum, promotion of investment and resolution of any outstanding trade issue would come for discussion.

The official said that during the meeting Pakistan would seek tariff reduction on some items to encourage its export. About 80 per cent of Pakistan exports to the US constituted of textile products.

According to the official, the US government wanted to help Pakistan in intellectual property rights, sharing of expertise in WTO, capacity building and to resolve other issues.

Official figures made available to Dawn, showed that the portion of Pakistani exports going to the US has increased from $2245.556 million in 2000-01 to $2257.538 million in 2001-02, showing an increase of 0.53 per cent.

The US exports to Pakistan stood at $687.887 million in 2001-02 against $565.477 million over the corresponding year, showing an increase of 21.64 per cent.

Exports to the US during the last decade have grown at a healthy rate of more than 20 per cent annually, from $662.2 million in 1990-91 to $ 2245.5 million in 2000-01.

Imports from the US have generally followed a declining trend during the past 10 years, except for couple of years in mid-1990s.

According to official statistics, readymade garments accounts for the major portion of total exports to the US. Its share was more than 42 per cent of total exports. Readymade garment export to the US has registered an impressive growth of more than 43 per cent in the last four years. It has gone up from $630.4 million in 1996-97 to $935.5 million 2000-01.

Similarly, made up articles of textiles have registered a growth of more than 100 per cent during the last four years. Their export to the US increased from $161.9 million to $405 million in 2000-01. Export of cotton yarn increased from $32.5 million to $81.5 million, export of carpets from $68.9 million to $112.2 million, cotton fabric from $140.3 million to $182.4 million during the same period of last four years.

However, there were a few items export to the US markets has gone down, which included fish and fish preparation, leather, knitted fabric, hosiery and surgical goods.

On the import side, machinery constituted the largest portion of total imports from the US. Import of machinery from the US declined drastically over the last four years. It has come down to $195.3 million in 2000-01 from $415.6 million in 1996-97. Similarly, there has been massive decline in import of wheat from the US. From the US $ 368.9 million worth wheat was imported in 1996- 97, which came down to $15.02 million in the year 2000-01.