ISLAMABAD, June 4: Pakistan lost $245.3 million on the export of major items during the July-March period of the fiscal year 2004-05, over the corresponding period last year because of lower export prices prevailing in the international market.

“Had the unit values of these exports remained at the last year’s level, the export growth would have been 17.4 per cent instead of 14.6 per cent as recorded in the first nine months of the current fiscal year,” says the Economic Survey 2004-05 Report released here on Saturday.

Further details showed that due to this fall in the prices of major commodities in the international market, export of raw cotton faced a net loss of $6.6 million during the year under review, cotton yarn by $43.9 million, bedwear by $89.9 million, towels by $19.8 million, readymade garments by $58.7 million, synthetic textile by $9.1 million, and footwear by $17.3 million.

The report also suggested that Pakistan’s export was highly concentrated in few items along with trading in a limited market in a few countries. Exports are highly concentrated in cotton, leather, rice, synthetic textiles and sports goods. These five categories of exports accounted for 79.3 per cent of total exports during 2003-04 with cotton alone contributing 62.3 per cent, followed by leather (5.4pc), rice (5.2pc) and synthetic textiles (3.8pc).

The report says the degree of concentration remained almost unchanged during the current fiscal year. Further disaggregation reveals that almost all the export earnings of cotton group have originated from textile and clothing. The same degree of concentration, by and large, persisted during 2004-05.

“Such a high degree of concentration of exports in a few items is a major cause of instability in export earnings. A poor cotton crop would thus seriously affect total export proceeds as has been the case in the past,” the report added.

Within the exports of textile manufactures, the share of cotton yarn and cotton cloth, representing raw material exports, declined from 19.0 per cent to 12.2 per cent and from 22.4 per cent to 22.3 per cent, respectively, during the last seven years.