ISLAMABAD, June 20: Textile and clothing exports declined by 2.5 per cent to $9.591 billion during the first 11 months (July-May) of the current fiscal year from $9.837 billion over the same period last year, Statistics Division said on Friday.

The over-all dismal performance of textile and clothing sector shows that the target of $19.2 billion exports is unlikely to be achieved.

However, a substantial growth in non-textile categories suggests that export proceeds would be closer to the target by the end of the current month.

Export of textile manufactures, accounting for 57 per cent of total exports, not only registered a negative growth, but also affected the overall export performance.

With the exception of raw cotton and other textile material, all other major components of textile manufactures registered negative growth in the current fiscal year.

An official report said the unit value of all major components of textile manufactures were up substantially but exports in quantum term registered a sharp decline across the board with an exception of raw cotton.

In other words, Pakistan’s textile exports could not benefit from higher international prices and as such the export performance of this sector remained dismal in 2007-08.

The dismal performance of textile exports, beside their structural issues, can be attributed to rising cost of production owing to increase in domestic cotton prices and power shortages.

In addition, the deteriorating law and order situation also resulted in reported diversion of export orders to other countries.

Poor quality of cotton on account of contaminated cotton issue also adversely affected exports of spinning industry.

Furthermore, textile exports appear to have also suffered from slowdown in US economy which had been the largest destination for Pakistani exports during the last few years.

In addition, Pakistan also faced a tough competition from China, India, Bangladesh and Turkey in the EU market for textile apparel.

In the case of bedwear exports, its exports to EU market are rising after reduction of anti-dumping duty on this category from the previous level of 13.1 per cent to 5.8 per cent. However, in the US market, this category of export faces a tough competition in terms of prices, especially from China.Analysts said textile exports are suffering from structural issues which need to be addressed by the industry itself.

The government has provided financial support to textile sector through research and development during the current fiscal year.

“Even this financial support cannot help improve the performance of textile exports. It is therefore, clear that the problems are structural in nature and cannot be resolved through financial support of the government,” they said.

Product-wise details showed that export of readymade garments declined by 2.84 per cent during the July-May period of the current fiscal year over the same period last year. However, knitwear exports were up 1.87 per cent during the July-May period over last year.

Export of cotton yarn, cotton cloth, cotton carded and yarn other than cotton yarn declined by 9.51pc, 6.80pc, 18.62pc and 29.87 per cent, respectively, during July-May over last year.

Export of bedwear, towel and tents dipped by 5.17pc, 1pc and 0.86pc, respectively. However, exports of art, silk and synthetic textile, made-up articles, excluding towels and other textile material went up by 21.82pc, 2.40pc and 12.57pc, respectively.