ISLAMABAD, July 5: Pakistan’s merchandise exports dropped 0.85 per cent to $9.12 billion during the fiscal year 2001-02 as compared to the previous financial year, according to the aggregate foreign trade figures released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics here on Friday.

There is one consolation in this figure: It is $0.12 billion more than the export target of $9 billion that had been fixed for the financial year 2001-02.

The fiscal 2000-01 had ended with the total export figure of $9.20 billion.

Trade deficit, however, declined by 20.65 per cent. It stood at $1.21 billion at the end of the financial year under report as compared to $1.52 billion in 2000-01. This was due to 3.67 per cent reduction in imports that totalled $10.33 billion during 2001-02. A positive aspect of these figures is the improvement in the proportion of imports covered by exports during the year under review. Whereas in the fiscal 2000-01, exports had paid for 85.76 per cent of imports; in 2001-02, the exports:imports ratio increased to 88.27 per cent.

During June, the exports were $953.49m, up by 12.69 per cent from the previous month (May 2002) and 0.17 per cent from the comparable period of previous year. But the imports ($971.30m) dropped by 13.22 per cent over May 2002. As compared to June 2001, however, the imports registered an increase of 4.94 per cent.

This reduced the trade deficit in June 2002 to $17.80 million as against $26.27 million in the corresponding period of previous year, denoting a steep drop of 167.77 per cent.