THE recent torrential rains and unprecedented urban flooding in Karachi have adversely disturbed port operations, causing problems for Pakistan’s international trade. Activity at the city’s two ports has either slowed down or has been suspended because of heavy monsoon showers over the last several days, creating challenges for safe operations and bringing cargo/shipping handling to a halt. Neither port officials nor labour could reach the ports after the city went under water, leading to delays in the provision of services such as cargo scanning, deliveries and cargo loading. Since there has been very limited activity, consignments have piled up, causing congestion. Exporters have been facing shipment delays for the last 10 days even before the city was submerged under rainwater and the situation has spawned concerns that the country may not be able to maintain the export growth momentum seen in the last couple of months after the government reopened the economy amid declining Covid-19 infections. The gravity of the situation and its potential impact on the nation’s foreign trade was also acknowledged by the adviser on commerce Abdul Razzak Dawood when he tweeted, that “it appears that because of heavy rains, particularly in Karachi, our export consignments are being delayed and, hence, exports may be affected in August”. At the same time, he advised exporters to bring any difficulties they faced to the notice of the commerce ministry.

At a time when coronavirus restrictions are being relaxed in Europe and North America, and buyers of Pakistani manufactured goods, especially of value-added textiles, are replenishing their depleted inventories, this state of affairs will deal a blow to efforts aimed at reviving the economy. Successive governments have failed to invest in improving urban infrastructure and port operations. It is rightly pointed out by business leaders from Karachi that the rain was not the real issue — the deluge merely exposed the crumbling infrastructure that has disabled efforts to increase exports. Infrastructure and logistics bottlenecks are believed by exporters to be a major reason behind the poor export performance of the country and have increased the cost of doing business in recent years.

According to the Logistics Performance Index, which is an interactive benchmarking tool created to help countries identify the challenges and opportunities in their performance on trade logistics and how they can improve, Pakistan ranked 125th among 160 nations in 2018. In other words, the logistics-friendly profile for Pakistan is nothing to talk about. Indeed, both the government and State Bank have implemented numerous measures to revive the stalled economy and enhance manufactured goods exports by mitigating the negative effects of the Covid-19 crisis on industry. However, such efforts will pay off only partially unless we start to invest heavily in our trade and urban infrastructure to produce exportable surplus and efficiently ship it to buyers abroad.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2020