ISLAMABAD, Sept 9: Finished goods exports ($1780.81 million) surged by 12.99 per cent in July-August 2003, raising their share in overall exports to 92.50 per cent as against 91.66pc during the same period of previous year.

The overall exports during the first two months of 2003-04 stood at $1925.14 million, up 11.96pc from July-August 2002.

The major contribution to this figure was, however, made by the textile manufactures whose exports stood at $1301.97 million, recording an increase of 12.81pc over the previous year, as revealed in the foreign trade statistics released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics here on Tuesday.

These accounted for 67.58pc of total exports, up 0.51pc from the same period of previous year. As a proportion of finished goods exports, their share stood at 73.06pc. As compared to previous year, however, this figure shows a slight decline of 0.11pc.

Almost one-third (29.50pc, to be exact) was accounted for by the exports of the semi-processed items — cotton yarn and cotton cloth. In absolute terms, their aggregate exports were $383.84 million — 0.83pc more than previous year.

Nevertheless, their share in textile manufactures figure constituted a very sharp drop of 3.5pc from previous year’s 33pc. This is, however, good news because it means increased share of fully processed/finished products.

The FBS figures show that the tents and canvas were the odd item out in the general trend of consistent improvement in the unit value of textile manufactures. Grossing only $4.11 million, equivalent to nearly two-thirds of export receipts of previous year, that did not make any dent in the general picture of surging textile manufactures exports.

Thus cotton yarn registered a sharp reduction of 16.10pc, quantity-wise, but its value ($150.72 million) suffered a loss of only 6.73pc. Cotton cloth exports, while receding by 7.09pc, saw a 6.41pc increase, grossing $233.11 million.

The star performer among textile manufactures was “bedwear” with exports worth $259.66 million, denoting a rise of 32.30pc over July-August of previous year against quantitative increase of 23pc. A significant aspect, in this connection, is that together with knitwear, the semi-processed items, cotton yarn and cotton cloth, which used to be the focus of policymakers and sole pride of textile manufacturers, have been relegated.

Knitwear exports ($248.25 million) too shot ahead by 29.91pc although, quantity-wise, these had gone up by only 24.11pc.

The next major performer is the category “readymade garments” whose exports stood at $179.59 million. But this denotes a sharp 21.10pc decline, quantity-wise. But the saving grace here is that the receipts did not fall in the same proportion and were down by 4.92pc only.

Art. Silk & Synthetic textiles ($93.71 million) surged by 18.89pc but, significantly, its quantitative exports had gone up by only 5.17pc. Likewise, towels exports registered an increase of 28.67pc in value ($73.42 million) for a quantitative increase of only 5.45pc.

Madeup Articles (including other textiles) raised their export receipts by 9.85pc.

OTHER MANUFACTURES: This category seems to have lost its momentum with exports ($279.41 million) recording a decline of 11.97pc during the period under review. All the major categories contributed to this downfall.